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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelf„iS..5.. ^ 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



BACON FS. SHAKSPERE 




FRANCIS BACON. 



BACON vs. SHAKSPERE 



Brief for plaintiff 



BY ^ 

EDWIN REED 

Member of the Shakespeare Society of New York 



Seventh Edition 
revised and enlarged 



BOSTON 
JOSEPH KNIGHT COMPANY 

1897. 



^\\m- %^ 



\\ 



\^ 



Copyright, 1S96, 
>Y Edwin Reed. 






Entered at Stationer's Hall, London. 



25nttjrrsttg iPrcss: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



w 



a- 



TO 

E\)t l^onorablc 5Stci)arti Cutts Sfjannon 

ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY AND MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY 

OF THE 

^ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

TO THE REPUBLICS OF 

NICARAGUA, SALVADOR, AND COSTA RICA 

THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED 
BY THE AUTHOR 



INTRODUCTORY. 



In the following Brief for the Plaintiff, Bacon vs. 
Shakspere, in an action of ejectment, now on trial, it 
is intended to cite such facts only as are generally 
agreed upon by both parties, or which can be easily 
verified, and, in the main, to let those facts, trumpet- 
tongued, speak for themselves. Like the lines that 
mark the sea-coast on our maps, each separate proof 
shades off in a thousand fine corroborating circum- 
stances, which are often very interesting as well as 
important for a full knowledge of the subject. The 
question of ciphers is, for the present purpose at 
least, clearly beyond soundings. 

For further information, the reader is respectfully 
referred, in behalf of Bacon, to ' The Authorship of 
Shakespeare,' by Nathaniel Holmes, 2 vols. Boston, 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 18S7; and to 'The Great 
Cryptogram' (first part), by Ignatius Donnelly, 
Chicago, R. S. Peale & Co., 1888; and, on the side 
of Shakspere, to ' The Bacon-Shakespeare Question 
Answered,' by Charlotte C. Stopes, London, Trub- 
ner & Co., 1889; to 'Studies in Shakespeare,' by 
Richard Grant White, Chap. VI., Boston, Houghton, 



viii Introductory. 

Mifflin & Co., 1886 ; and to ' Wit, Humor, and Shake- 
speare' by John Weiss, Chap. VIII., Boston, Roberts 
Bros., 1876; not to mention numerous others, on 
either side, which it is to be feared the world will 
soon be too small to contain. 



PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 



We may say of improbabilities, as we do of evils, 
" Choose the least." It is antecedently improbable 
that the " Shake-speare " plays, for which the whole 
domain of human knowledge was laid under con- 
tribution, were written by William Shakspere of 
Stratford, for he was uneducated. It is also ante- 
cedently improbable that Francis Bacon, whose name 
for nearly three hundred years has been a synonym 
for all that is philosophical and profound, who was 
so great in another and widely different field of labor 
that he gave a new direction for all future time to the 
course of human thought, was the author of them. 
And yet, to one or the other of these two men must 
we give our suffrage for the crowning honors of 
humanity. 

In the claim for Shakspere, the improbability is so 
overwhelming that it involves very nearly a violation 
of the laws of nature. No man ever did, and, it is 
safe to say, no man ever can acquire knowledge in- 
tuitively. One may be a genius, like Burns, and the 
world be hushed to silence while he sings ; but the 
injunction, " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat 



X Preface to Second Edition. 

thy bread," is everywhere as true of intellectual as it 
is of physical life. The fruit of the tree of knowledge 
can be reached only by hard climbing, the sole in- 
stance on record in which it was plucked and handed 
down to the waiting recipient having proved a 
failure. 

In the case of Bacon, also, the assumption may be 
said to He on the very boundary line of credibility. 
It implies the possession of faculties seemingly incon- 
sistent, if not mutually exclusive ; and yet to a cer- 
tain degree it is not without precedent. Fortune has 
more than once emptied a whole cornucopia of gifts 
at a single birth. What diversity, what beauty, what 
grandeur in the personality of Leonardo da Vinci ! 
He was author, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, 
naturalist, civil engineer, inventor, and in each ca- 
pacity, almost without exception, eminent above 
his contemporaries. His great painting, the ' Last 
Supper,' ranks the third among the products in this 
branch of modern art, Raphael's ' Madonna di San 
Sisto,' and Michael Angelo's * Last Judgment' being 
respectively, perhaps, first and second. At the same 
time, he was the pioneer in the study of the anatomy 
and structural classification of plants ; he founded 
the science of hydraulics ; he invented the camera 
obscura ; he proclaimed the undulatory theory of 
light and heat ; he investigated the properties of 
steam, and anticipated by four centuries its use in 
the propulsion of boats; and he barely missed the 
great discovery which immortalized Newton. In- 



Preface to Secoiid Edition. xi 

deed, we see in Leonardo da Vinci not a mountain 
only, but a whole range of sky-piercing peaks. 

Another illustrious example is Goethe, scarcely 
inferior to Bacon, whatever the claims made for the 
latter, in the brilliancy and scope of his powers. As 
a poet, Goethe was a star of the first magnitude, a 
blaze of hght in the literary heavens. His 'Faust' 
is one of the six great poems of the world. As a 
writer of prose fiction he stands in the front rank, his 
' Wilhelm Meister ' being a classic, side by side with 
' The Heart of Mid Lothian,' ' Middlemarch,' and 
'The Scarlet Letter.' By a singular coincidence, 
also, as compared with Bacon, he was one of the 
master spirits of his age in the sphere of the sciences. 
An evolutionist before Darwin, he beheld, as in a 
vision, the application of law to all the phenomena 
of nature and life. In botany, he made notable addi- 
tions to the then existing stock of knowledge; and 
throughout the vast realm of biology he not only 
developed new methods of inquiry, but spread over 
it the glow of imagination, without which the path of 
discovery is always doubly difficult to tread. 

In the hght of precedents, therefore, the claim 
made to the authorship of the plays in behalf of 
Bacon cannot be discredited. 

E. R. 

Andover, Mass., September i, 1890. 



PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 



Nothing is more tenacious of life than an old 
popular belief. It has the force of habit, which the 
pressure of enlightened opinion, through successive 
generations, alone can overcome. " O Lord, thou 
hast taught us," once prayed a good deacon, " that 
as a twig is bent, the tree 's inclined," — a truth drawn 
from the Book of Nature, and as indubitable as 
though the writings of Pope were a part of the sacred 
canon. Trees that have unnatural and uncomely- 
twists in their branches, even if growing on Mt. Zion, 
must be permitted to die of old age; the science of 
arboriculture is powerless to affect them. Intelligent 
and conscientious scholars among us are still defend- 
ing the historical verity of the first chapter of Gene- 
sis. A personal devil is as potent in the minds of 
some men to-day as he was formerly in the minds 
of all. How often one hears in Germany the polite 
ejaculation Gesund/icit uttered when a person sneezes ! 
Even now, many people turn, almost instinctively, to 
see in which part of the heavens the moon quarters 
for a forecast of the weather, though it has long been 
demonstrated that that luminary has no more influence 



Preface to Fourth Edition. xiii 

in this branch of our local afifairs than has the most 
distant star which the Lick telescope reveals to us. 

Unfortunately, these old beliefs and habitudes 
linger in some of the noblest minds to the last. The 
shadow of a solar eclipse, sweeping over the earth, 
permits the just and the unjust, the wise and the 
foolish, to emerge into the light behind it indiscrimi- 
nately. Evil spirits do not always beg the privilege, 
when they find themselves about to be exorcised, of 
taking refuge in a herd of swine and leaping over a 
precipice into the sea. The butcheries of the Salem 
witchcraft, marking the close of that delusion, were 
perpetrated by those to whom the love of God was 
the chief end of man. One of the last judges in 
England to send a witch to the gallows was Time's 
noblest offspring, Sir Matthew Hale. The last in 
that country to manumit their slaves were the clergy. 
The Garrison mob in Boston wore broadcloth on 
their backs, and all the current virtues in their 
hearts. It is, therefore, no criterion of a good cause 
that men of acknowledged abilities and culture sup- 
port it, nor of a bad cause that such men denounce it. 

Indeed, Truth has a modest way of entering the 
world like a mendicant, at the back door. Such a 
guest is seldom admitted, on his first arrival, at the 
other end of the house. Copernicus stood there, 
shivering in the cold, thirteen years before he dared 
even to lift the knocker. Every great religion has 
sprung up among the poor. Every great reform 
owes its origin to the oppressed. Every great inven- 



xiv Preface to Fourth Edition. 

tion has had, Hke the founders of Rome, a wolf for a 
nurse. It is not to be expected that rebelHon against 
a king of poets will find favor among the nobility that 
surround his throne. The high priests who, with 
unsandalled feet, minister in a sacred temple, will not 
be the first to despoil the idol they worship. No 
captain in that " fleet of traffickers and assiduous 
pearl-fishers," to which Carlyle refers, in the most 
eloquent sentence he ever wrote, will strike his colors 
or change his outfit so long as the products of his 
industry under the old regime are bringing him 
wealth. And what to him are winds and waves or 
any storm of criticism, whose barque is anchored to 
the theory of miraculous Inspiration ! Showers of 
verbal aerolites on the mimic stage, only a product of 
untaught Nature ! 

Amid the turmoil of our daily life, if we listen rev- 
erently, we may hear voices crying in the wilderness, 
perhaps the voice of a v.'oman, alone and forsaken, in 
a strange city. 

"No accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world hath ever lost." 

From the banks of the Missouri, from the wheat- 
fields of Minnesota, from far-ofi" Melbourne at the 
antipodes, out of the heart of humanity somewhere, 
a response in due time is sure to come. 

E. R. 

Andover, Mass., January i, 1891. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

I. The Author of the " Shake-speare " Plays . i 

II. William Shakspere ii 

III. Francis Bacon 44 

IV. Objections Considered 118 

V. Coincidences 184 

VI. Disillusion, a Gain 264 

VII. Biography of Shakspere in Fact and in 

Fiction 266 

VIII. Summary . . . . 280 



Index 283 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Page 

Francis Bacon Frontispiece 

Signatures of William Shakspere 15 

Signatures of Aldermen and Burgesses of Strat- 
ford, INCLUDING John Shakspere's 17 

Title-page of First Quarto of Hamlet .... 21 

Signatures of John and Mary Shakspere ... 25 

Signature of Judith Shakspere 25 

Signatures of Fulk Sandells and John Richard- 
son 25 

Bust of Shakspere at Stratford-upon-Avon . . 29 

Droeshout Portrait of Shakspere 33 

Francis Bacon at the Age of Nine 45 

Signatures of Francis Bacon and Others ... 77 

Key to Cover of Northumberland MSS. ... 84 
Cover of Northumberland MSS. . . . . {opposite) 84 

Ben Jonson 89 

Globe Theatre 131 

St. Michael's Church -179 

Queen Elizabeth , 221 

Frontispiece of the ' Novum Organum ' . , . . 253 

A Spanish Motto 256 

A Wreath of Chivalry 257 

" Quod me alit, me extinguit " 258 

" Sic spectanda fides " 259 

"In hac spe vivo" 260 



LIST OF AUTHORS CONSULTED. 



[Those marked with a * favor the Baconian theory of the origin of 
the " Shake-speare " plays.] 



^' Abbott, E. A., Introduction to Mrs. Pott's Edition of 
Bacon's Promus (1882) ; Life of Bacon (1885). 

"^Academy, The, April 21, 1894. 

-J Addison, Joseph, The Tatler, No. 267 (1710). 

^AiKiN, Lucy, Court of James L (1822). 

^ Allibone, S. a., Dictionary of Authors (1871). 

^ Athen^um, The (1856, 187 1, 1874). 
Aubrey, John, Biographical MSS. (1697). 

^ *Bacon, Delia, The Philosophy of Shakespeare's Plays 
Unfolded (1857). 
*Bacon Societ\', Journals of, London (1886-90). 

^ Bartas, Du, The Second Week of Creation (1584). 

Baynes, T. S., Eraser's Magazine (1879-80) ; Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica, 9th ed. (Art. Shakespeare). 

^ Beaumont, Francis, The Mask (161 2). 

^' Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, March, 1889. 

^ Blades, William, Shakespeare and Typography (1872). 

"^ Bradley, Henry, The (London) Academy, April 21, 1894. 

^ Browne, C. Elliot, Eraser's Magazine (1874). 

'^ BucKNiLL, John C, The Psycholog>' of Shakespeare (1859). 

'" Burney, Charles, History of Music (1789). 

^ Campbell, Chief Justice, Shakespeare's Legal Acquire- 
ments (1859). 



XX List of Authors Consulted. 

Chettle, Henry, Kind "Heart's Dream (1592). 
Church, Richard W., Life of Bacon (1884). 
Clark, N. G., Elements of the English Language (1866). 
v' Clarke, Charles and Mary Cowden, Preface to Works 

of Shakespeare (1866). 
* ' Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Lectures on Shakespeare 

(1830). 
' Collier, J. P., Notes and Emendations (1853) ; Shake- 
speare's Works (1858). 
Cooke, James, Preface to English Bodies by John Hall 

(1657). 
Craik, G. L., EngUsh Literature and Language (1866). 
' Creighton, Charles, Blackwood, No. 145. 
V Davis, Gushing K., Law in Shakespeare (1884). 

Dickens, Charles, Dictionary of Oxford and Cambridge 

(1879). 
DiGGES, Leonard, Verses to Shakespeare (1623, 1640). 
' Dixon, Wm. Hepworth, Personal History of Lord Bacon 

(1861). 
''' * Donnelly, Ignatius, The Great Cryptogram (1888). 
^ Doyle, John T. — Shakespeariana (1893) ; Overland 
Monthly (1886). 
Dowden, Edward, Shakespeare : His Mind and Art (1879). 
Dyer, T. F. T. Folk- Lore in Shakespeare (1884). 
Elze, Karl, William Shakespeare (1874). 
"' Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Representative Men (1876). 
Evelyn, John, Diary ( 1 64 1 to 1 706 ) . 
*Fearon, Francis, Journal of Bacon Society (1886). 
Field, B. Rush, Medical Thoughts of Shakespeare, Second 
Edition (1885). 
'^' Fleay, Frederic Gard, Life and Work of Shakespeare 
, (1886). 

Florio, John, World of Words (1597). 
Fowler, Thomas, Life of Bacon (1881). 



List of Authors Consulted. xxi 

Friswell, James H., Life Portraits of William Shakespeare 

(1864). 
^ Fuller, Thomas, Worthies of England (1662). 
^ Gervinus, George G., Shakespeare Commentaries (1863). 
\/ Gifford, Willl\m, Life and Works of Ben Jonson (18 16). 
^ Green, Henry, Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers 

(1870). 
Greene, Robert, Groatsworth of Wit (1592). 
~' GuizoT, F. P. G., Shakespeare and his Times (1852). 
v/ Hallam, Henry, Introduction to the Literature of Europe 

(1854). 
^ Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O., Outlines of the Life of Shake- 
speare (1882). 
Harvey, Gabriel, Letters and Sonnets (1592). 
"^ Hawkins, John, History of Music (1776). 
^' Hazlitt, William, Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of 
the Age of Elizabeth (i 821). 
Heard, Franklin Fiske, Shakespeare as a Lawyer (1883). 
Hippocrates, Presages of Death (about 350 B. C.) 
*Holmes, Nathaniel, The Authorship of Shakespeare 
(1887). 
"^ Hudson, Henry N., Shakespeare : His Life, Art and Char- 
acters (1872). 
Hume, David, History of England. 
- Hunter, Joseph, Life and Studies of Shakespeare (1845). 
Ingleby, Clement M,, Shakespeare : The Man and the 

Book (1877) ; Essays on Shakespeare (18S8). 
Ireland, Samuel, Picturesque Views on the Warwickshire 
Avon (1795). 
'•• Johnson, Samuel, Preface to Works of Shakespeare (1765). 
^' Jonson, Ben, Epilogue to Every Man in his Humour 
The Poetaster ; Conversations with Drummond (16 19) 
Preface to First Folio Edition of Shakespeare (1623) 
Discoveries (1637). 



xxii List of Authors Consulted. 

ELnight, Charles, William Shakespeare (185 1). 

Langlin, J. N., Shakespeariana (1884). 
"^ Lowell, James Russell, Among my Books, ist Series 

(1870). 
- Lytton, E. Bxjlwer, Edinburgh Review (1836). 
~" Macaulay, Thomas B., Essay on Lord Bacon (1837). 
~ Mallet, David, Life of Lord Bacon (1740). 
"^Malone, Edmund, Life of Shakespeare (182 1). 
■^ Massey, Gerald, Shakespeare's Sonnets (1866). 

Matthew, Sir Toby, Collection of EngUsh Letters (1660). 

MiNTO, WiLLL^i, English Prose Composition (1886). 
'- Montagu, Basil, Life of Bacon (1825). 
^ Morgan, Appleton, The Shakespearean Myth (1881) ; 
^ ^ Shakespeare in Fact and in Criticism (1886). 
"'' MoRLEY, Henry, Enghsh Writers, Vol. X. (1893). 

Nash, Thomas, Epistle to University Students (1589). 

Newman, Francis W., The Echo (1887). 

Nichol, John, Francis Bacon : His Life and Philosophy, 
Parts I. and 11. (1888). 
"^ NoRRis, Parker, Shakespeare Portraits (1885). 
" *0'Connor, Willlu^i, Hamlet's Note-Book (1886). 

Oldys, W^illl\m, O. M. (1761). 

Osborne, Francis, Advice to his Son (1656). 

Parmenides, Poetic Remains of (450 b. c). 

Pearson, Charles H., National Life and Character (1893). 
"■ Pepys, Samuel, Diary (165 9- 1669). 

*Pott, Constance M., Edition of Bacon's Promus (1882). 

Quarterly Review, April, 1894. 

Rawley, William, Resuscitatio (1657). 

Remusat, M. de. Bacon : sa vie, son temps, sa philosophie, 
et son influence (1857). 
"■ Rymer, Thomas, The Tragedies of the Last Age (1678). 
■' Schlegel, a. W. von, Lectures on Dramatic Art (1846). 

Shakespeariana (i 883-1 893). 



List of Authors Consulted. xxiii 

Shaw, Thomas B., English Literature (1852). 
"' Simpson, Richard, School of Shakspere, 2 Vols. (1878). 
•^ *Smith, William H., Bacon and Shakespeare (1857). 

Spalding, Thomas A., Elizabethan Demonology (1880). 
V Spedding, James, Philosophical, Literary, and Professional 
Works of Francis Bacon (1858) ; Letters and Life, 
do. (1870) ; Evenings with a Reviewer (1881). 
Staffer, Paul, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (1880). 
'-' Steele, Richard, The Tatler, No. 131. 
' Stopes, Charlotte C, The Bacon-Shakespeare Question 
Answered (1889). 
*Stronach, George, Journal of Bacon Society (1888). 
^ Swinburne, Algernon C, Study of Shakespeare (1879). 
^' Taine, H, a.. History of English Literature (1871). 

*Theobald, Robert M., Journals of Bacon Society, Vols. L 
and IL (1886-91) •"' Dethroning Shakspere j Baconi- 
ana (1893-94). 
**' Ulrici, Heiuvlvnn, Shakespeare's Dramatic Art (1846). 
'^' Verplanck, G. C, Works of Shakespeare (1847). 
**-' Ward, A. W., English Dramatic Literature (1875). 
■^ Weiss, John, Wit, Humor, anei Shakespeare (1876). 
*^ Welsh, Alfred H., English Literature and Language 
^ (1883). 

Whately, Richard, Bacon's Essays, with Annotations 
(1864). 
^ Whipple, Edwin P., The Literature of the Age of Elizabeth 

(1865). 
'" * White, Thomas W., Our English Homer (1893). 
^ Wise, John R., Shakespeare : His Birthplace and its 
Neighborhood (1861). 



If we look carefully into the matter, it is not on the prescribed method 
of Bacon that his fatne was built. It was the power of divination in the 
man which made him great and influential. — Dr. Ingleby. 

Bacon was the prophet of things thai Newton revealed. — Horace 
Walpole. 

The art which Baco?i taught was the art of inventing arts. — 
Macaulay. 

The glance with which he surveyed the i^itellectual universe resetn- 
bledthat which the archangel from the golden threshold of heaven darted 
down i?tio the new creation, — Ibid. 

His service lay not so much in what he did himself as in the grand 
impulse he gave to others. — Prof. Minto. 

// se saisit tellement de I'imagination, qii'il force la raison h s'incliner, 
et it les eblouit aidant qzi'il les eclaire. — M. R^musat. 

The Novum Organum is a string of aphorisms., a collection as it were 
of scietitific decrees, from an oracle who foresees the ftiture a?id reveals 
the truth. It is intuition, not reasoning. — M. Taine. 

There is something about him not fully tinderstood or discerned, 
which, 271 spite of all curtailments of his claims in regard to one special 
kind of etninence or another, still leaves the sense of his eminence as 
strong as ever. — Prof. Craik. 

No two critics agree as to the nature or cause of the profound impres- 
sion he has made on mankind. We are certain only that he is a re- 
splendent orb, in the light of which, across an interval of three centuries, 
every man still casts a shadow. 



BACON vs. SHAKSPERE. 



FOR THE PLAINTIFF. 



I. 

THE AUTHOR OF THE " SHAKE-SPEARE " PLAYS. 

IT is conceded by all that the author of the " Shake- 
speare " 1 Plays was the greatest genius of his 
age, perhaps of any age, and, with nearly equal 
unanimity, that he was a man of broad and varied 
scholarship, 

I. He was a linguist, many of the Plays being 
based on Latin, Greek, Spanish, and Italian produc- 
tions, some of which had not then been translated 
into English. Latin and French were especially very 
familiar to him. It is thus apparent that not less 
than five foreign languages, living and dead, were 
included in his repertory. 

1 Wherever personal reference is made in this work to William 
Shakspere of Stratford, the name is so spelled, William Shakspere ; 
but wherever the reference is to the author of the plays, as such, we 
treat the name as a pseudonym, spelling it as it was printed on many 
of the title-pages of the early quartos, William Shake-speare. In 
all cases of quotation, however, we follow the originals. 



2 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

Latin. — The ' Comedy of Errors' was founded upon the 
Mefiaechtni of Plautus, a comic poet who wrote about 200 B. c. 
The first translation of the Latin work into English, so far as 
known, was made in 1595, subsequently to the appearance of 
the " Shake-speare " play, and without any resemblance to it 
" in any peculiarity of language, of names, or of any other 
matter, however slight." — Verplanck . 

" His frequent use of Latin derivatives in their radical sense 
shows a somewhat thoughtful and observant study of that lan- 
guage." — Richard Grant White's Memoirs of William Shake- 
speare, p. xvi. 

" He showed his fundamental knowledge of that language, 
by using its words in their genuine, original meaning, which 
they have lost with their adoption into English." — Gerviniis'' 
Shakespeare Connnentaries} p. 26. 

" After the proofs I have given, it will hardly, I think, be 
denied that he was quite capable of studying the celebrated 
story [of ' Venus and Adonis ' ] in the original sources, and 
that he certainly did so in relation to Ovid's version of it." — 
Prof. T. S. Baynes' in Fraser''s Mag. 1880. 

" He knew Latin, we need not doubt, as well as any other man 
of his time." — Stapfer''s Shakespeare and Classical Antiq7iity, 
p. 100. 

"He makes some of his characters [in 'Love's Labor's 
Lost '] use false Latin, that he may show his learning in cor- 
recting it." — T. W. Whitens ' Our English Homer,'' p. 195. 

Greek. — ' Timon of Athens 'was drawn partly from Plu- 
tarch and partly from Lucian, the latter author not having been 
translated into English earlier than 1638 (White), fifteen years 
after the publication of the play, 

Helena's pathetic lament over a lost friendship in ' A Mid- 
summer Night's Dream' (IIL 2) had its prototype in a Greek 
poem by St. Gregory of Nazianzus, published at Venice in 1504. 
— Gibbon's Decline and Fall, chap, xxvii. 

" The likeness between the Clytemnestra of Aeschylus and the 

1 "A German professor, Gervinus, is the author of the greatest 
book ever written on Shakespeare." — Stapfer. 

2 Editor Encydopcsdia Britanjiica, ninth edition. 



Author s Attainments. 3 

Lady Macbeth is too remarkable to escape notice ; that be- 
tween the two poets in their choice of epithets is as great, 
though more difficult of proof. Yet I think an attentive student 
of Shakespeare cannot fail to be reminded of something familiar 
to him in such phrases as ' flame-eyed fire,' ' flax-winged ships,' 
and ' star-neighboring peaks.' 

" In the ' Electra ' of Sophocles, which is almost identical in 
its leading motive with ' Hamlet,' the Chorus consoles Electra 
for the supposed death of Orestes in the same commonplace 
way which Hamlet's uncle tries with him. Shakespeare expa- 
tiates somewhat more largely, but the sentiment in both cases 
is almost verbally identical. " ^ — LoiveWs Ainong My Books, 
p. 191. 

A passage in ' Troilus and Cressida ' is " inexplicable except 
on the supposition that Shakespeare was acquainted with what 
Plato wrote." — Richard Grant White. 

Among the presages of death, given by a Greek writer, 400 
B. C, and repeated in 'Henry V.," " Shake-speare " mentions 
one which is peculiar to the people of Greece, and which no 
translation of the original work, even into Latin, had brought 
out. 

Italian. — An Italian novel, written by Giraldi Cinthio and 
first printed in 1565, furnished the incidents for the story of 

1 Gibbon and Lowell were unfortunately restrained by certain sup- 
posed exigencies from acknowledging that the author of the plays 
must have been familiar with the Greek language. Mr. Lowell, how- 
ever, feels compelled to ask, rather helplessly, not to say absurdly, — 

" Is it incredible that he may have laid hold of an edition of the 
Greek tragedies, Graece et Latine, and then, with such poor wits as 
he was master of, contrived to worry some considerable meaning out 
of them .? " 

This state of mind on the part of so distinguished a critic illustrates 
very forcibly one of the chief causes of the poverty of Shake-spearean 
criticism. Mr. Steevens, for instance, suffered himself to be driven 
to the preposterous conclusion that the play of ' Troilus .and Cres- 
sida ' is not wholly " Shake-speare " 's, because of certain Grecisms 
in it, of which, he assumed, " Shake-speare " could have had no 
knowledge. 



4 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

' Othello.' The author of the play " read it probably in the 
original, for no English translation of his time is known." — 
Gervinus' Shak. Com. p. 505. 

"He was, without doubt, quite able to read Italian." — 
Richard Grufit White. 

" When I ago, distilling his poison into Othello's ears, utters 
the oft quoted lines : — 

' Who steals my purse, steals trash ; 't is something, nothing; 
'T was mine, 't is his, and has been slave to thousands ; 
But he that filches from me my good name 
Robs me of that which not enriches him, 
And makes me poor indeed,' — 

he but repeats with little variation a stanza of Berni's ' Orlando 
Innamorato,' of which poem, to this day, there is no English 
version." — Ibid. : Metnoirs of William Shakespeare, XXIII. 

" The great majority of the dratnatis personcz in his comedies, 
as well as in some of the tragedies, have Italian names, and 
many of them are as Italian in nature as in name. The moon- 
light scene in 'The Merchant of Venice' is southern in every 
detail and incident. ' Romeo and Juliet' is Italian throughout, 
alike in coloring, incident, and passion. In the person of 
Hamlet, the author appears even as a critic of Italian style." — 
Prof, Bay ties in Encyc. Brit. XXI. 758. 

French. — One entire scene and parts of others in ' Henry 
V.' are in French. 

Plowden's French ' Commentaries,' containing the celebrated 
case of Hales vs. Petit, which was satirized by the grave- 
diggers in ' Hamlet,' were translated into English for the first 
time more than half a century after the play was written. 

" The author shows his knowledge of even the most delicate 
peculiarities of the French tongue." — Richai'd Grant White's 
Shakespeare'' s Works, II. 206. 

" A brilliant proof that the author of the plays was familiar 
with the French language is the masterly way in which he 
makes Dr. Caius, in ' The Merry Wives of Windsor,' murder 
the Queen's English. Those who have ever heard a French- 
man utter this jargon will not hesitate to admit that the poet has 



Authors Attainments. 5 

grasped and reproduced it with inimitable truth and in the wit- 
tiest manner." — Elze^s Willia?n Shakespeare, p. 382. 

" The evidence of his knowledge of French is more abundant 
and decisive, so much so as hardly to need express illustra- 
tion." — Prof. Baynes in Encyc. Brit. art. '■'■Shakespeare.''' 

Spanish. — The poet drew some of his materials for the 
' Two Gentlemen of Verona ' from the Spanish romance of 
Montemayor, entitled the ' Diana,' which was translated into 
English in 1582, the translation, however, not being printed till 
1598. "The resemblances are too minute to be accidental." 
[Halliwell-Phillipps.] 

" Could there be anything more to the point than the descrip- 
tion he gives in ' Love's Labor 's Lost ' of the Spanish lan- 
guage? Can one who describes the character of a language 
with such clearness and insight be unacquainted with it.?" — 
Elze''s Shakespeare, p. 385. 

Gervinus calls attention to two of the Comedies in which 
Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian words and sentences 
abound, and ventures to suggest a desire, on the part of the 
author, to exhibit in them his knowledge of foreign languages. 

II. He had intimate acquaintance with ancient and 
modern Hterature, numerous authors, from the age of 
Homer down to his own, being drawn upon for illus- 
tration and imagery in the composition of these 
works. 

" The writer was a classical scholar. Rowe found traces in 
him of the ' Electra ' of Sophocles ; Colman, of Ovid ; Pope, of 
Dares Phrygius and other Greek authors; Farmer, of Horace 
and Virgil; Malone, of Lucretius, Statins, Catullus, Seneca, 
Sophocles, and Euripides; Steevens, of Plautus ; Knight, of the 
' Antigone ' of Sophocles ; White, of the ' Alcestis ' of Euripi- 
des." — Nathaniel Hohnes'' Authorship of Shakespeare, p. 57. 

" The early plays exhibit the poet not far removed from 
school and its pursuits ; in none of his later dramas does he 
plunge so deeply into the remembrances of antiquity, his head 



6 BacojL vs. Shakspere. 

overflowing with its images, legends, and characters. The 
' Taming of the Shrew,' especially, may be compared with the 
* First Part of Henry VI.' ' z'« the manifold ostentation of book- 
learning.'' " — Cervinus' Shak. Com. p. 145. 

"A mind fresh from academic studies." — R. G. White's 
Essay on Shakespeare's Genius, p. ccxxiv. 

"In that play, so marvellously full of thought, ' Troilus and 
Cressida,' Ulysses rises to the full height of our idea of the 
wandering Ithacan. Whence came this Ulysses ? Not from 
Homer's brain ; for, although Homer tells us that the King of 
Ithaca was ' divine,' and ' spear-renowned,' and ' well skilled in 
various enterprise and counsel,' the deeds and words of the 
hero, as represented by the Greek poet, hardly justify these 
epithets. Here we see that Shakespeare was even wiser than the 
Homeric ideal of human wisdom. He made our Ulysses.'' — Ibid. 

" The early plays mark the productions of a fresh collegian. 
His familiar acquaintance with college terms and usages makes 
for the conclusion that he enjoyed the privileges of a university 
education." — Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke. 

" The very earliest writings of Shakespeare are imbued with 
a spirit of classical antiquity." — Charles Knight. 

" His habits had been scholastic and those of a student. A 
young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent 
pursuits." — Coleridge's Lectures on Shakespeare, p. 287. 

" The immaturity [of his mind in the early plays] is seen in 
the extent to which the smell of the lamp mingles with the 
freshness and vigor of poetic feeling. The wide circle of 
references to Greek fable and Roman story suggests that the 
writer had come recently from his books, and was not unwilling 
to display his acquaintance with them." — Prof. Baynes in 
Eraser's Mag. 1 880. 

" ' Love's Labor 's Lost,' one of the earliest of the plays, is so 
learned, so academic, so scholastic in expression and allusion, 
that it is unfit for popular representation." — O'Connor's Ham- 
let's Note-Book. 

Stapfer,^ a distinguished French critic, intimates that in his 

1 It may be well to remark that Stapfer, Baynes, and White are 
unfriendly witnesses, and that Gervinus and Verplanck wrote before 



Authors Attainments. 7 

Judgment some of the plays are " over-cumbered with learning, 
not to say pedantic.'" 

III. He was a jurist, and his fondness for legal 
phrases is remarkable. 

He had " a deep technical knowledge of the law," and an 
easy familiarity with " some of the most abstruse proceedings 
in English jurisprudence." — Lord CJiief Justice Campbell. 

" Whenev'er he indulges this propensity, he uniformly lays 
down good law." — Ibid. 

One of the sonnets [46] is so intensely technical in its phrase- 
ology that " without a considerable knowledge of English foren- 
sic procedure, it cannot be fully understood." ^ — Ibid. 

"In an age when it was the common practice for young law- 
yers to write plays, one playwright left upon his works a stronger, 
sharper legal stamp than appears upon those of any of his con- 
temporaries ; and the characters of this stamp are those of the 

this controversy began. Judge Holmes is our senior counsel, but we 
claim the right at this hearing to put him also on the witness stand. 
His work on the ' Authorship of Shakespeare ' is as temperate in its 
judgments as it is philosophical and profound in its general treatment 
of the subject. 

^ " Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war, 
How to divide the conquest of thy sight ; 
Mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar. 
My heart mine eye the freedom of that right. 
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie, — 
A closet never pierced with crystal eyes, — 
But the defendant doth that plea deny, 
And says in him thy fair appearance li^s. 
To 'cide this title is impanneled 
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart ; 
And by their verdict is determined 
The clear eye's moiety and the dear heart's part : 
As thus, — mine eye's due is thy outward part, 
And my heart's right thy inward love of heart." 

Sonnet XL VI. 



8 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

complicated law of real property." — Richard Grant White's 
Memoirs of William Shakespeare, p. xlvii. 

" His knowledge of legal terms is not merely such as might 
be acquired by the casual observation of even his all-compre- 
hending mind ; it has the appearance of technical skill." — 
Edtnund M alone. 

" The marvellous intimacy which he displays with legal terms, 
his frequent adoption of them in illustration, and his curiously 
technical knowledge of their form and force." — Charles and 
Mary Cowden Clarke. 

"In one scene the lover, wishing a kiss, prays for a grant of 
pasture on his mistress' lips. This suggests the law of pasture ; 
and she replies that her lips are "no common." This again 
suggests the distinction between tenancy in common and ten- 
ancy in severalty, and she adds, "though several they be.' " — 
Davis'' Law in Shakespeare. 

" Among these [legal terms], there are some which few but a 
lawyer would, and some even which none but a lawyer could, 
have written." — Franklin Fiske Heard s Shakespeare as a 
Lawyer. 

" In the ' Second Part of Henry IV. [V. 5], Pistol uses the 
term, absque hoc, which is technical in the last degree. This 
was a species of traverse, used by special pleaders when the 
record was in Latin, known by the denomination of a special 
traverse. The subtlety of its texture, and the total dearth of ex- 
planation in all the reports and treatises extant in the time of 
Shakespeare with respect to its principle, seem to justify the 
conclusion that he must have obtained a knowledge of \ifrom 
actual practice.^ — Ibid. 

IV. He was a philosopher. 

"In the constructing of Shakespeare's Dramas there is an 
understanding manifested, equal to that in Bacon's Novum 
Organum.'" — Carlyle. 

" He is inconceivably wise ; the others, conceivably." — 
Emerso7i. 

1 Italics our own. 



Author s Attainments. 9 

" From his works may be collected a system of civil and 
economical prudence." — Dr. Johnson. 

" He was not only a great poet, but a great philosopher." — 
Coleridge. 

"In some of his [Falstaff's] reflections we have a clear, 
though brief, view of the profound philosopher underlying the 
profligate humorist and makesport : for he there discovers a 
breadth and sharpness of observation and a depth of practical 
sagacity such as might have placed him in the front rank of 
statesmen and sages." — Hudson'' s Shakespeare. His Art and 
Life., II. 94. 

Thus was the author's mind not only a fountain of 
inspiration from its own illimitable depths, but en- 
riched in large measure with the stores of knowledge 
which the world had then accumulated. 

" There is the clearest evidence that his mind was richly 
stored with knowledge of all kinds." — Prof. Baynes in Frase/s 
Mag., 1880. 

" The range and accuracy of his knowledge were beyond 
precedent or later parallel." — LowelFs Among My Books, 
p. 167. 

"An amazing genius, which could pervade all nature at a 
glance, and to whom nothing within the limits of the universe 
appeared to be unknown." — IVhalley. 

" Shakespeare had in his time few equals in the range of his 
manifold knowledge." — Gervinus'' Commentaries, p. 25. 

" It is childish to discuss the amount of learning possessed by 
an author who has taught the whole world." — Stapfet^s Shake- 
speare and Classical Antiquity, p. 106. 

" The great master who knew everything." — Charles Dickens. 

" Let it be accepted as a truth past all debate, that among 
the great ones of the earth Shakespeare stands alone, in unap- 
proachable majesty. What was the secret of his power ; from 
whence derived this marvellous insight into human nature un- 
der all circumstances, ages, and climes, this accurate knowledge 
of sciences, arts, governments, morals, manners, philosophies, 



lO 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



and codes, this exquisite command of language, never wielded 
with such skill before or since, by which each character, event, 
or thought is drawn in lines of living light ? This, the greatest 
of all human mysteries which we have received from our fathers, 
we must transmit, deepened and heightened rather than lessened 
by our labors, to our children." — Allibone's Dictionary of 
Authors, II. 2050. 

Note. — The authorities cited in this chapter give us the best and 
ripest results of modern scholarship. Nearly all of them are of the 
latter half of the current century. 




II. 

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 

I. The family of William Shakspere, the actor, 
was grossly illiterate. His father and mother made 
their signatures with a cross. Of his two children, 
Judith, at the age of twenty-seven, was also unable to 
write her name ; Susanna could not read her hus- 
band's manuscript, nor even identify it by sight 
among others. The little we know of his own youth 
and early manhood affords presumptive proof of the 
strongest kind that he was uneducated. 

" Nature only helped him." — Leonard Digges, 1640. 
" His learning was very little." — Thomas Fuller'^s Worthies, 
1662. 

"Old Mother-wit and Nature gave 
Shakespeare and Fletcher all they have." 

Sir John Denhatn, 1668. 

" Shakespeare said all that Nature could impart." — Chet- 
ivood, 1684. 

" Never any scholar, as our Shakespeare, if alive, would con- 
fess himself." — Winstanley, 1684. 

" He was as much a stranger to French as Latin." — Gerard 
Langbaine, 1691. 

" The clerk that showed me this church is above eighty years 
old. He says that this Shakespeare was formerly bound in 
this town to a butcher, but that he ran away from his master to 
London." — ■ Letter from Dowdall, visiting Stratford, 1693. 

"In him we find all arts and sciences, all moral and natural 



12 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

philosophy, without knowing that he ever studied them." — 
Drydeti. 

'• Without any instruction either from the world or from 
books." — Hume's History of England, III. no. 

" The constant criticism which his contemporaries, from 
Greene to Ben Jonson, passed on him was that he was ignorant 
of language and no scholar."' — Richard Si?npso7is School of 
Shakspere, II. 39S. 

'■Where this wonderful creator gained the knowledge of 
human nature and experience of human motives which have 
presented him to posterity' rather as something divine than a 
mere mortal artist, it is impossible to learn." — Prof Shaw's 
English Literature, p. 121. 

" And thou, who did'st the stars and sunbeams know, 
Self-school'd. self-scann'd, self-honor'd, self-secure, 
Didst stand on earth unguess'd at." 

Matthew Arnold's So7inet to Shakespeare. 

" The only author that gives ground for a verj^ new opinion, 
that the philosopher and even the man of the world may be 
bom, as well as the poet." — Alexander Pope. 

"The untaught son of a Stratford yeoman." ^ — Richard 
Grant White. 

II. The Shakspere family, like many others of 
that period, had no settled or uniform method of 
speUing their name.^ More than thirty different 
forms have been found among their papers, on their 

1 No reference to Shakspere personally, made in his lifetime or 
within a hundred years after his death, in contradiction of the above, 
can be prodaced. The only possible exception is Jonson's well- 
known jest relating to his " small Latin and less Greek," for which 
see p. 102. 

2 English orthography was then in a plastic state, as orthography 
always is before the formation of a national literature. Bacon once 
wrote his own name Bakon^vA'Ca. the evident intention, entirely charac- 
teristic of him, to simplify our alphabet by substituting for the hard 
sound of c the letter k. after the manner of the Greek and primitive 
Roman languages. 



William Shakspere. 13 

tombstones, and in contemporaneous public records. 
How William wrote it, it is impossible to say ; ac- 
cording to Dr. Johnson, each time differently in the 
three signatures to his will.^ 

In the registry of his baptism and of his burial, it 
is Shakspere ; in his marriage bond, Shagspere ; 
under the bust at Stratford, Shakspeare. Among 
other forms discovered in the records of the family 
are the following : Shaxpur, Chacksper, Sckakespeire, 
Chacsper, Shexpere, Shackspire, Shakispere, Shaxberd, 
Shakaspeare, Shaykspere, and Schakespayr'} Patro- 
nymics often varied at that time, as they do now, in 
different families and in different sections of the 
country ; but here the variations in the same house- 
hold were unusually numerous, and to all appear- 
ances at hap-hazard. 

It is a singular circumstance, nevertheless, that in 
all the forms tabulated by Wise, nineteen hundred 
and six in number, the one printed on the title-pages 
of the plays and poems, Shakespeare, does not 
appear. It is unique. So far as we know, no person 
in Stratford or in any other part of the kingdom, pre- 
viously to the publication of the ' Venus and Adonis,' 
wrote it in that way. Literature had an absolute 
monopoly of it.^ 

1 " Whether it be a privilege of genius never to write one's name 
alike twice, even on the same day, such was certainly the fact with 
Shakespeare." — Mellen Chamberlain, Librarian Boston Pub. Lib., 18S9. 

■^ In Stratford the name was undoubtedly pronounced, as it was 
often written, Shaxpere. It occurs in this form one hundred and four 
times in the town records. The last syllable, also often written pur, 
was uttered like the first, with a short vowel sound. 

^ It is significant that in many of the quartos a hyphen is inserted 
between the syllables (Shake-speare), perhaps (as it has been sug- 
gested) to give the name a fanciful turn, and distinguish it in another 



14 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

III. Shakspere's handwriting, of which we have 
five specimens in his signatures to legal documents, 
was not only almost illegible, but singularly unculti- 
vated and grotesque, wholly at variance with the 
description given of the manuscripts of the plays in 
the preface to the folio edition of 1623. The edi- 
torial encomium was in these words : — 

" His mind and hand went together; and what he 
thought, he uttered with that easiness, that we have 
scarce received from him a blot in his papers." 
[Italics our own.] 

In this connection we reproduce the five auto- 
graphs of Shakspere, the only acknowledged speci- 
mens of his penmanship in existence, mfac- simile} 

IV. No letter written by him has come down to us, 
and but one (soliciting a loan of money) addressed 
to him. An inspection of his autograph is alone 
sufficient to explain the paucity of his correspond- 
ence, if not its absolute non-existence. 

slight respect from that of the actor. The true explanation, however, 
may lie deeper than this. In Grecian mythology, Fallas Athene (the 
Roman Minerva) was the goddess of wisdom, philosophy, poetry, and 
the fine arts. Her original name was simply Pallas, a word derived 
from TTtiKKeiv, signifying " to brandish or shake." She was generally 
represented with a spear. Athens, the home of the drama, was under 
the protection of this Spear-shaker. 

In our age such a signature would be understood at once as a 
pseudonym. 

1 The Public Library of the City of Boston contains a volume of 
North's Plutarch of 1603, in which is inscribed on a fly-leaf the name 
of " Wilm. Shakspeare." Concerning this signature the following 
statement is made in one of the official bulletins of the association : 

" The field of comparison of the library signature with the known 
originals is narrow, being limited to those written between 1613 and 
1616, all of which show such a lack of facility in handwriting as would 
almost preclude the possibility of Shakespeare's having written the 
dramas attributed to him." — McUe7i Chamberlain^ Librarian, 1S89. 



William Shakspere. 15 



.*-> 




V. In the dedication of the ' Venus and Adonis,' 
pubHshed in 1593, Shakespeare calls that poem the 
"first heir" of his invention. This makes it ante- 
date the Plays. Accordingly Richard Grant White 
sets it down as written in 1584-5, before Shakespeare 
left Stratford. Gervinus, also, assigns it to the same 
early date. 

The ' Venus and Adonis ' is a product of the high- 
est culture. It is prefixed with a Latin quotation 
from Ovid,^ and is written throughout in the purest, 
most elegant and scholarly English of that day. 
Hazlitt compares it to an ice-house, " almost as hard, 
as glittering, and as cold." Is it possible that in a 
town where six only of nineteen aldermen and bur- 
gesses could write their names, where the habits ol 
the people were so inconceivably filthy that John 

1 " Taken from a poem of which there existed at the time no Eng- 
lish version." — Prof. Baynes in Fraser^s Mag., i8So. 

"It is hardly possible that the Amoves of Ovid, whence he derived 
his earliest motto, could have been one of his schoolbooks." — Halli- 
■well-Phillipps. 



1 6 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

Shakspere, father of William, was publicly prose- 
cuted on two occasions for defiling the street in front 
of his house, where the common speech was 2. patois 
rude to the verge of barbarism, and where, probably, 
outside of the school and church, not a half-dozen 
books, as White admits, were to be found among the 
whole population, — is it possible that in such a town 
a lad of twenty composed this beautiful epic? 

" The ' Venus and Adonis ' and the ' Lucrece ' bear palpable 
tokens of college elegance and predilection, both in story and 
in treatment. The air of niceness and stiffness, peculiar to the 
schools, invests these efforts of the youthful genius with almost 
unmistakable signs of having been written by a schoolman." — 
Charles and Mary Cowdeti Clarke. 

" It is extremely improbable that a poem so highly finished 
and so completely devoid oi patois as the ' Venus and Adonis ' 
could have been produced under the circumstances of his then 
domestic surroundings." — Halliivell-Phillipps. 

" There was a grammar school in Stratford ; but the idea of 
anybody being taught English grammar in an English grammar 
school (let alone the English language) in those days, is utterly 
inconceivable. There was no such branch, and mighty little of 
anything in its place except birchen rods, the church catechism, 
the criss-cross row, and a few superfluous Latin declensions out 
of Lily's Accidence. Nor did Shakespeare hear the limpid, 
urban Enghsh of the poems and sonnets at home or in Strat- 
ford streets. . . . Members of Parliament could not understand 
each other's rustic patois, says Mr. White. Even the soldiers 
in Elizabeth's army could not comprehend the word of com- 
mand, unless given by officers of their own county or shire 
town. . . . But Shakespeare, uncouth rustic as he was, writes, 
as the * first heir ' of his invention, the most elegant, sumptuous, 
and sensuous verses that English literature possesses to-day." — 
Apple ton M organ y 

^ It is well known that Dr. Morgan, after writing ' The Shake- 
spearean Myth,' repudiated the conclusions to which that book natur- 










-1^ 



J 





o4 



4 



%i' 



^ r^J 



Signatures of Aldermen and Burgesses of Stratford- 
upon-Avon, 1565. 



William Shakspere. 19 

" When at twenty-two years of age he fled from Stratford to 
London, we* may be sure that he had never seen half-a-dozen 
books other than his horn-book, his Latin Accidence, and a 
Bible. Probably there were not half-a-dozen others in all Strat- 
ford.'" — Richard Grant White. 

" There were certainly not more than two or three dozen 
books, if so many, in the whole town.'"^ — Halliwell-Phillipps' 
Outlines. 

ally leads. He is now the orthodox president of a Shakespeare 
Society in New York, still asserting, however, that he knows of no 
misstatement of fact in the work above mentioned. 

Of the curriculum of the Stratford Grammar School in the sixteenth 
century there is no record. We can judge of it only by the intellect- 
ual light which it shed upon the people around it, most of whom, as 
a matter of fact, could not read or write. Speculations drawn from 
the study of other schools of the same grade in more favored parts of 
the kingdom, such as Professor Baynes indulges in, are of little value. 

1 Here are two views of Stratford : — 

1. The ideal : 

" As his [Shakspere's] stout gelding mounted Edgehill [on the road 
to London], and he turned in his saddle to take a parting look at the 
familiar landscape he was leaving, he would behold what Speed, in 
his enthusiasm, calls ' another Eden.' " — Prof. Baynes in Encvc. Brit., 
XXL 739. 

2. The real : 

" A dirty village. . . . The streets foul with offal, mud, muck- 
heaps, and reeking stable refuse." — Richard Grant White. 

" Shakespeare's home was in the vicinity of middens, fetid water- 
courses, mud walls, and piggeries." — Halliivell-Phillipps. 

" The most dirty, unseemly, ill-paved, wretched-looking town in all 
Britain." — David Garrick, 1769. 

" Stratford was a perfect hot-bed of religious and domestic strife." 
— C. Elliot Browne in Eraser's Mag., 1874. 

As a specimen of the popular style in which the life of Shakspere 
is often written, we append the following : — 

" Four years were spent by Shakespeare [after leaving London] in 
this dignified retirement, and the history of literature scarcely pre- 
sents another such picture of calm felicity and satisfied ambition." — 
Clrveland's Compendium of English Literature for the Use of Schools 
and Colleges, p. 129. 



20 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

VI. It is believed that Shakspere left his home in 
Stratford and went to London some time between 
1585 and 1587. He was then twenty-one to twenty- 
three years of age. One of the first of the " Shake- 
speare " Plays to be produced on the stage was 
' Hamlet,' and the date not later than 1589.^ It was 
founded on a foreign tragedy of which no translation 
then existed in English. As first presented, it was 
probably in an imperfect form, having been subse- 
quently rewritten and enlarged into what is now, per- 
haps, the greatest individual work of genius the 
human mind has produced.^ To assume that Shak- 

1 In an epistle to university students, published in Greene's ' Mena- 
phon ' in 15S9, Thomas Nash refers to 'Hamlet 'as a play then 
familiar to them. That this early ' Hamlet ' was Shake-speare's there 
can be no reasonable doubt, for we can trace it in contemporary 
notices all along from the time of its production in Oxford and Cam- 
bridge to its appearance in the Shake-speare quarto of 1603, where 
we read on the title-page that the play had often been acted in the 
presence of the two universities. In 159 1 Nash alludes to the famous 
soliloquy, " To be or not to be," and says that it had been a subject of 
declamation on the public stage for five years preceding, or since 
1586. Gabriel Harvey, writing in 1598, distinctly ascribes the 
•Venus and Adonis ' and ' Lucrece ' and the play of ' Hamlet ' to the 
same person. The most striking feature of the play from the first is 
the part taken by the ghost ; this was not in the original legend, and 
is so extraordinary that, wherever it appears, we must ascribe it to the 
creative genius of Shake-speare himself. The play was therefore 
written in 1585-6, probably before William Shakspere left Stratford. 
Bacon was then about twenty-five years of age, had been highly edu- 
cated at home and abroad, and was a briefless barrister at Gray's Inn. 

2 It has rivals for this honor : — 

"Othello is, perhaps, the greatest work in the world." — Macaulay. 

"King Lear, the most wondrous work of human genius." — Rich- 
ard Grant White. 

"Macbeth, perhaps the greatest tragedy of ancient or modern 
times." — .£. P. Whipple. 



THE 

Tragicall Hiftorie of 
HAMLET 

Trince ofDenmarl^ 

By William Shake-fpeare. 

As It hath beenediuerfetimes aftedby hisHighndTefer* 
uants in the Cittie of London : asalfointhetwoV-. 
niuerfities of CambridgeandOxford,and elfe-where 




At£,en3onpxintcdforN.i:- andlohnXrun^elL 

Title-page of First Quarto of Hamlet. 



William Shakspere. 23 

spere, under the circumstances in which he was then 
placed, at so early an age, fresh from a country town 
where there were few or no books, and from a family 
circle whose members could not read or write, was 
the author of this play, would seem to involve a mir- 
acle as great as that imputed to Joshua, — in other 
words, a suspension of the laws of cause and effect. 

VII. His residence in London extended over a 
period of twenty-five years, during which time, accord- 
ing to popular belief, he wrote thirty-seven dramas, 
one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, and two or three 
minor poems, besides accumulating a fortune the 
income of which has been estimated at ^400 (equiv- 
alent in our time and in our money to 1^24,000) per 
annum.i Such an instance of mental fecundity the 
world has never seen, before or since. 

At the same time, he was personally unknown in -f- 
literary and political circles. 

" Of his eminent countrymen, Raleigh, Sydney, Spenser, 
Bacon, Cecil, Walsingham, Coke, Camden, Hooker, Drake, 
Hobbes, Inigo Jones, Herbert of Cherbury, Laud, Pym, Hamp- 
den, Selden, Walton, Wotton, and Donne may be properly 
reckoned as his contemporaries, and yet there is no evidence 
whatever that he was personally known to either of these men, 
or to any others of less note among the statesmen, scholars, 
soldiers, and artists of his day, excepting a few of his fellow- 
craftsmen." — Richard Grant White's Memoirs of William 
Shakespeare, p. cxi. 

" The prose works published in the latter part of the sixteenth 
and the early part of the seventeenth centuries contain abundant 
notices of every poet of distinction save Shakespeare, whose 

1 " The relative value of money in Shakespeare's time and ours 
may be roughly computed at one-twelfth in articles of trade, and one- 
twentieth in landed or house property." — HalUwell-Phillipps. 



A- 



24 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

name and works are rarely and only slightly mentioned. . . • 
It is plain that the bard of our admiration was unknown to the 
men of that age." — Ingleby, 

" Since the constellation of great men who appeared in 
Greece in the time of Pericles, there was never an}' such soci- 
ety ; yet their genius failed them to find out the best head in 
the universe." — Emerson. 

Imagine the inhabitants of Lilliput paying no at- 
tention to Gulliver ! 

VIII. The end of his career was as remarkable as 
its beginning. In 1610 or thereabouts, while he was 
still comparatively young (at the age of forty-six), 
he retired from London and passed the remainder of 
his days among his old neighbors in Stratford,^ loan- 
ing money and brewing beer for sale.^ His intellect- t 
ual life seems to have terminated as abruptly as it 
had begun. The most careful scrutiny fails to show 
that he took the slightest interest in the fate of the 
plays left behind him, or in his own reputation as the 
author of them. Some of these productions were 
still in manuscript, unknown even to the stage, and 
not given to the public, either for fame or profit, till 

1 " Could go down to Stratford and live there for years, only col- 
lecting his dividends from the Globe Theatre, lending money on 
mortgage, and leaning over his gate to chat and bandy quips with 
neighbors." — LowelFs Amoftg Jl/v Books, p. 172. 

" At a period of life when Chaucer began to write the ' Canterbury 
Tales,' Shakspere, according to his biographers, was suddenly and 
utterly to cease to write. We cannot believe it." — Charles Knight. 

- Evidently a wholesale business, for a bill against a single person 
for malt delivered within the space of about two months, called for 
one pound nineteen shillings and ten pence, an amount equivalent 
now to one hundred and twenty dollars. This bill, including an item 
of two shillings, money loaned, was put in suit in 1604, the year in 
which the perfected ' Hamlet ' was published. 



Mark-signatures of William Shakspere's father and mother. 

Mark-signature of William Shakspere's daughter Judith, at the age 
of twenty-six. 



e 



Mark-signatures of Fulk Sandells and John Richardson, subscribers to 
William Shakspere's marriage-bond. 



Ignorance is the curse of God ; 
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. /^ 

2 Henry IV. 



The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance. 

Troilus and Cressida. 

There is no darkness but ignorance. 

Twelfth Night. 




O thou monster ignorance, how deformed dost thou look ! 

Love's Labor 's Lost. 



^ 



IVilliam Shakspere. 27 

thirteen years after his retirement. Such indifterence 
to the children of his brain, and so complete a seclu- 
sion in the prime of his manhood from the refine- 
ments of life, present to us a picture, not only painful 
to contemplate, but one that stultifies human nature 
itself. 

IX. He was exceedingly litigious. He brought 
suits against several persons for money loaned, in one 
instance for a sum as small as two shillings, and in 
another, failing to recover from the debtor, he re- 
lentlessly pursued the debtor's bondsman for a year. 
He was also plaintiff in an action against the town 
of Stratford in the matter of the tithes. There is 
reason to believe that he kept an attorney con- 
stantly beside him, domiciled in his house.^ 

" The biographer must record these facts, because the literary 
antiquaries have unearthed, produced, and pitilessly printed 
them as new particulars in the life of Shakespeare. We hunger 
and we receive these husks ; we open our mouths for food, and 
we break our teeth against these stones." — Richard Grant 
White's Memoirs of Shakespeare, p. 88. 

X. We have conclusive evidence that he was am- 
bitious for a title, and that for the purpose of acquir- 
ing one for his father, and indirectly for himself, he 
made representations to the Herald's College which 
were not only false but ridiculous. The grant was 
refused. 

"Toward the close of the year 1599 a renewed attempt was 
made by the poet to obtain a grant of coat-armor to his father. 
It was now proposed to impale the arms of Shakespeare with 

1 Thomas Greene, attorney, " residing under some unknown condi- 
tions at New Place." — Halli'diell-Phillipps. 



28 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

those of Arden, and on each occasion ridiculous statements 
were made respecting the claims of the two families." — Halli- 
well-Phillipps' Outlines^ p. 87. 

The officer at the head of the college, Sir William 
Dethick, was charged with connivance at the forgery 
under the influence of a bribe. 

XI. He was also hard and unfeeling towards the 
poor. A conspiracy having been formed by a few 
interested persons in Stratford for enclosing the com- 
mons, he was induced by secret means to favor the 
movement, although the authorities of the town in 
a letter to him protested against it as unjust and 
oppressive to the poorer classes. 

"It is certain that he was in favor of the enclosures." — 
Halliwell-Phillipps' Outlines^ p. 168. 

XII. Our surprises do not cease at his death. On 
the heavy stone slab that marks his grave in the old 
church at Stratford, visitors read the following in- 
scription : — 

" Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear 
To dig the dust enclosed here : 
Blest be the man that spares these stones, 
And cursed be he that moves my bones." 

These lines are evidently his own,^ for the impre- 
cation contained in them prevented his wife, who sur- 
vived him, from being laid at rest by his side.^ 

1 " The rudeness of the verses seems to us a proof of authenticity." 

— LowelVs Among My Books, p- 17- 

2 " He was buried in the chancel of the church, because that local- 
ity was the legal and customary burial place for owners of the tithes." 

— Hallhvell-Phillipps. 




Bust of Shakspf.re at Stratford-upo\-Avc 



William Shakspere. 31 

XIII. Shakspere made no mention of any literary- 
property in his will. He was careful to specify, 
among other bequests, his " second-best bed," but 
not a book, not one of his own books, not even a 
manuscript, though one-half of all the works that 
bear his name, including the immortal dramas of 
'Macbeth,' ' The Tempest,' and 'Julius Csesar,' were 
unpublished, and some of them even unknown, at 
the time of his death.^ 

" He had no books. His will shows the fact. He leaves 
houses, lands, messuages, orchards, gardens, wearing apparel, 
furniture, a sword, a silver and gilt punch-bowl, a second-best 
bed for his wife — no books. He had twenty thousand dollars 
a year, and not a volume. The man who wrote ' Love's Labor 's 
Lost,' so learned, so academic, so scholastic in expression and 
allusion that it is unfit for popular representation, the man 
whose ample page is rich with the transfigured spoils of ages, 
that man lived without a library ! " — O'Co/inor^s Hamlefs 
Note Book, p. 75. 

XIV. We have two portraits of Shakspere, each 
possessing historically some claims to our confidence. 
One is the famous bust in the church at Stratford, 
placed there within seven years after Shakspere's 

1 "It is simply silly to talk, as the commentators will, of Shake- 
speare's omitting to mention them in his testaments because his copy- 
rights had expired, or because he or his representatives had sold 
them to the Globe Theatre. . . . These plays had been entered on 
the Stationers' books, and, once so entered, it was impossible to 
alienate them to the Globe Theatre or to any other purchaser, except 
by registry of later date. . . . The record of alienation could have 
been made in but one place, and it was never made there." — Appleton 
Morgan. 

The cicerone at Stratford informs visitors that the wicked manu- 
scripts were destroyed, after Shakspere's death, by his puritanical 
children ! 



32 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

death. This is, in all probability, a correct likeness. 
That it was not set up, however, by any one in Strat- 
ford is evident from the fact that Shakspere's body is 
said in one of the inscriptions to be "within this 
monument," whereas we know that the body was 
buried under the floor of the chancel, at some dis- 
tance from the bust, and with one other grave inter- 
vening between them.^ Concerning the bust itself 
we quote as follows : — 

" What a painful stare, with its goggle eyes and gaping 
mouth ! The expression of the face has been credited with 
humor, bonhommie, hilarity, and jollity. To me it is decidedly 
clownish." — Norris' Porti'aits of Shakespeare^ p. i8. 

" No one can look upon its manifest defects without wishing 
to know if he who wrote for all time did really inhabit such a 
body as this." — Ibid. 

"The skull has the smoothness and roundness of a boy's 
marble, and about as much individuahty or expression. . . . 
The cheeks are puffy and spiritless ; the mustaches are curled 
up in a manner never found except on some city exquisite ; . . . 
finally, the expression of the eyes, so far as they have any, is 
simply that of easy, rollicking good nature, not overburdened 
with sense or intellect." — Prof. J. S. Hart in Scribner's 
Moitthly,]\i\y, 1874. 

"It has no more individuahty or power than a boy's marble." — 
FriswelVs Life Portraits of Wm. Shakespeare, p. 10. 

Malone's work, in covering the bust with a coat of white 
paint, " did not altogether obliterate the semblance of an intel- 
lectual human being, and this is more than can be said of the 
miserable travesty which now distresses the eye of the pilgrim." 
— Halliwell-Phillipps. 

"The painted figure-head-like bust is hideous." — Richard 
Grant White. 

1 " It is not likely that these verses [under the bust] were composed 
by a StTa.t{oTd\ziTi." — JIa//iwen-P/i///i/>/>s' Outlines, I. 285. 



'>* 



.>«s« ym:. 





Ukoeshout Portrait of Shaksperk. 



William Shakspere. 35 

The other portrait is the Droeshout engraving on 
the title-page of the first foHo, than which it would 
be impossible, we think, to imagine anything more 
hideous. It is, without doubt, a caricature. For 
once the critics are agreed : — 

" A hard, wooden, staring thing." — Richard Grant White. 

" Even in its best state, it is such a monstrosity that I , for 
one, do not believe that it had any trustworthy exemplar." — 
Ingleb/s The Man and the Book. 

" It is not known from what it was copied, and many think it 
unlike any human being." — Norris' Portraits of Shakespeare, 
"p. 18. 

" The hair is straight, combed down the sides of the face, and 
bunched over the ears ; the forehead is disproportionately high ; 
the top of the head bald ; the face has the wooden expression 
familiar in the Indians used as signs for tobacconists' shops, 
accompanied by an idiotic stare that would be but a sorry 
advertisement for the humblest establishment in that trade." — 
Appleton Morgan. 

Of the new portrait of Shakspere, found in the 
house of the Town Clerk of Stratford in 1861, and 
preserved among the treasures of the birthplace, Mr. 
Friswell says : — 

" As a suggestion of the face of Shakspere it would be very 
good, save for the weakness, want of power, and, indeed, vacu- 
ity which is to be seen in it." — p. 57. 

" I have very little, if any, doubt that this portrait was copied 
from the bust, at the very earliest, some time in the first half of 
the last century, but more probably about the time of the 
jubilee in 1769." ^ — Halliwell-Phillipps. 

^ The number of different portraits of Shakspere in existence ex- 
ceeds three hundred, all of them, with the exception of those above 
mentioned, purely ideal. It is worthy of remark, however, that out 
of these has come, by a kind of evolution, a type which not only is 



36 Bacon vs. SJiakspere. 

XV. So far as we know, Shakspere never claimed 
the authorship of the plays.^ He permitted his name 
to be used, doubtless for good and sufficient reasons, 
and in accordance with a not unusual custom at that 
period,^ on the title-pages of fourteen of them printed 
in his lifetime, though they wei-e all (thirty-seven in 
number) ascribed to him unmistakably in the collec- 
tive editions that appeared after his death.^ His 

characteristic and popular, but which bears a singular resemblance 
to the features of Francis Bacon. It would seem as though artists 
were unconsciously striving to get the two heads, as Mr. Donnelly 
says, " under one hat." 

1 " Shakespeare never claimed the plays as his own. . . . He was 
unquestionably indifferent about them, and died without seeing the 
most remarkable series of intellectual works that ever issued from the 
brain of man in the custody of type." — The Athenczum (London), 
Sept. 13, 1856. 

" I pretend to no special erudition in English literature, but have 
read from boyhood that Shakespeare never claimed the tragedies as 
his, nor kept any copy of them." — Prof. Francis W. Newman in The 
Echo, Dec. 31, 18S7. 

" Here are plays constantly pirated, and yet it is impossible to dis- 
cover that anybody, or a legal representative of anybody, named 
Shakespeare, wver set up a claim to proprietorship in any of these 
works." — Appleton Morgan. 

2 John Rogers published an edition of the Bible in 1537 with the 
statement that it was " truly and purely translated into English by 
Thomas Matthew." The name of Thomas Matthew was a fictitious 
one, the work itself being substantially a reprint from Tyndale and 
Coverdale. It is still known, however, as Matthew's Bible. 

' It has been suggested that Bacon could not have voluntarily de- 
prived himself of the honor of having written the plays, if he were the 
author of them; this is exactly what astonishes us in Shakspere. 

" But for them [Heminge and Condell] it is more than likely that 
such of his works as had remained to that time [1623] unprinted, 
would have been irrecoverably lost, and among them were 'Julius 
Caesar,' 'The Tempest,' and 'Macbeth.'" — Lowell's Amo)ig My 
Books, p. 167. 

With Shakspere, the choice would have lain between fame as a 



William. Shakspere. 37 

reticence on the subject, especially after his retire- 
ment to Stratford, is itself significant. His fellow- 
townsmen, it is probable, never witnessed one of 
these productions on the stage. Neither his local 
fame (if he had any) as a dramatist, nor the influ- 
ence of his wealth and position (if exerted by him) 
overcame their repugnance to theatrical representa- 
tions, for in 1602 the board of aldermen prohibited 
any performance of the kind in the town under a 
penalty often shillings. In 1612, when Shakspere's 
reputation among his neighbors should have been at 
its zenith, the penalty was increased to ten pounds. 
The key to the situation lies in his stolidity or in his 
sense of honor. 

XVI. The references to Shakspere, direct and indi- 
rect, in contemporaneous literature (i 592-1616), have 
been carefully collated and published. They number 
(reckoning all that have been claimed, some of which 
are undoubtedly spurious, and only eighteen refer to 
Shakspere by name) one hundred and twenty-seven, 
and may be classified as follows : — 

Those made to his works, one hundred and twenty; 
those made to him as a man, seven. ^ The citations 
in the first class are, of course, irrelevant to our 
purpose. In the second, we find statements from 
the following named persons: Thomas Nash, 1589; 

dramatist and oblivion ; with Bacon, between fame as a dramatist and 
fame as a statesman, the still greater one (in his own estimation) of a 
philosopher being assured. 

1 For the testimonies of Heminge, Condell, and Leonard Digges, 
given in 1623, see page 148 et seq. These ten contemporaries com- 
prise the whole number of those whose references to Shakspere per- 
sonally have come down to us, — seven during his lifetime, and three 
after his death. For Chettle's alleged testimony, see p. 150, 



-h 



38 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

Robert Greene, 1592; John Manningham, 1601 ; 
two anonymous writers, about 1605 ; Thomas Hey- 
wood, 161 2; and Ben Jonson, 1616. Nash calls 
Shakspere an idiot; Greene, a Jack-at-all-trades ; 
Manningham makes him the hero of an amour; the 
anonymous writers refer to his wealth, to his landed 
proprietorship, and (one of them) to his aspirations 
for a title ; Heywood is indignant because two of his 
own poems had been published by a piratical printer 
as Shakspere's, although (he affirms) without the 
latter's consent; and Ben Jonson caricatures him as 
a Poet-Ape. 

With the exception of Manningham and Heywood, 
who make no reference to the subject, all these writ- 
ers concur in attributing some sort of imposture to 
Shakspere. They seem to recognize in him a pre- 
tence of authorship which excites their contempt, 
Greene makes his statement from a dying bed, ad- 
dressing it to the playwrights Marlowe, Nash (or 
Lodge), and Peele, as though they also were familiar 
with the truth of what he writes. Greene's sincerity 
cannot be successfully impugned.-' We quote these 
testimonials as follows : — 

A. " Amongst this kind of men that repose eternity in the 
mouth of a player [as distinguished from plays in print] I can 
but engross some deep-read schoolmen or grammarians [persons 
educated at grammar-schools] who have no more learning in 
their skull than will serve to take up a commodity [to keep a 

1 It is painful to read the harsh criticisms on Robert Greene's char- 
acter made with one consent by all Shakspereans. Greene differed 
from his associates, so far as we can see, chiefly in one particular, 
viz. : he repented of his follies and with his dying breath tried to 
induce others to follow his example. But then, at the same time, he 
pronounced Shakspere an impostor. Hinc illce lacrymce ! 



William Shakspere. 39 

tradesman's books] nor art in their brains ; " " idiot art-masters, 
who think to outbrave better pens with the swelling bombast of 
bragging blank verse, . . . and translate two-penny pamphlets 
from the Italian, without any knowledge even of its articles. . . . 
It may be the ingrafted overflow of some kill-cow conceit." — 
NasJi's Letter prefixed to Greene's '• Menaphon^ 1589. 

For interpretation of the above, we quote from a 
noted Shaksperean : — 

" Nash was in demand for his style, and his business was to 
reduce to pointed form the matter furnished him by others. 
Hence his publications of 1589 must be supposed to represent, 
not the fruits of his own experience, but the ideas decanted 
into him. Greene may be assumed to have crammed him with 
what had to be said as introduction to Menaphon j and the 
identity of idea, as well as of phrase, between Nash's epistle 
and things which Greene subsequently wrote will prove this 
assumption to be correct. We shall see that the actor-author, 
here attacked by Nash, is assailed in the same phrases as the 
one attacked by Greene three years later, in his ' Groatsworth of 
Wit.' But in the latter case it is Shakspere who is thus as- 
sailed. Therefore it is probably, also, Shakspere in the former 
case." — Sifnpson's School of Shakspere, II. 355. 

The following specifications, drawn from points in 
Nash's epistle, will make this clearer : — 

1. Eternity in the month of a player, and not in 
printed plays. 

The plays of " Shake-speare " had then been com- 
ing out on the stage for several years, but not one of 
them had been printed. The earliest quarto edition 
of a " Shake-speare " play, of which we have any 
record, bears date 159 1. 

2. / can but engross some deep-read schoolmen or 
grammarians, that is, persons educated at grammar- 
schools. 



40 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

Shakspere had had no opportunity to acquire an 
education beyond that afforded by the grammar- 
school of his native village. 

3 . The swelling bombast of bragging blattk verse. 

" Shake-speare," not Marlowe, was the first to 
introduce blank verse on a large scale into the Eng- 
lish drama. Not only was Marlowe three years 
younger, but he began to write five years later, than 
" Shake-speare." It is time that the contrary opin- 
ion, a well-worn fiction, should be set at rest. 

4. Translate two-pemiy pamplilets from tlie Italian, 
without any knowledge even of its articles. 

The plays drawn from Italian sources or laid in 
Italian scenes and antedating Nash's letter, were 
' The Comedy of Errors,' ' The Taming of a Shrew,' 
and ' The Two Gentlemen of Verona.' 

5 . The ingrafted overflow of some kill-cow conceit 
To kill the cow or the calf was, in the slang phrase 

of the day, to make extemporary speeches during a 
performance on the stage. It was said of Shakspere, 
by a ridiculous introversion of facts, that in his 
younger days, when apprenticed as a butcher to his 
father, " he would kill a calf in high style." 

The whole gravamen of Nash's charge is that some 
contemporary playwright, having no education be- 
yond that of a " country grammar-school," unable to 
read Italian or " even latinize his neck-verse," an 
idiot art-master, was endangering university scholar- 
ship by fraudulent pretences.^ 

1 The prominent dramatists of the Elizabethan age were univer- 
sity men. Marlowe, Greene, Nash, Fletcher, and Heywood were 
educated at Cambridge; Chapman, Peele, Daniel, Beaumont, Lodge, 
Lyly, Drayton, Ford, and Massinger, at Oxford. Ben Jonson received 



William Shakspere. 41 

B. " An upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with 
his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as 
well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and, 
being an absolute Johanties Factotum, is, in his own conceit, 
the only Shake-scene in a country." — Greene's Groatsworth of 
Wit (1592).! 

" Throughout we see Greene's determination not to recog- 
nize Shakspere as a man capable of doing anything by him- 
self. . . . He will not own that the man is capable of having 
really done that which passes for his." — Simpson'' s School of 
Shakspere (1878), II. 389. 

C. " Thou shalt learn to be frugal, ... to feed upon all 
men, . . . and, when thou feelest thy purse well lined, buy thee 
some place in the country." — Ratsie's Ghost (anon.), 1605. 

D. " With mouthing words that better wits have framed. 

They purchase lands and now esquires are made." ^ 
Retnrtt from Parnassus (anon.), 1606. 

E. " Poor Poet-Ape, that would be thought our chief, 

Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit, 
From brokerage is become so bold a thief 

As we, the robbed, leave rage and pity it. 
At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean, 

Buy the reversion of old plays. Now grown 
To a little wealth and credit in the scene, 

He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own, 

classical instruction at the famous Westminster school, supplemented, 
it is believed, by a course at Cambridge. 

1 In 1587 Greene wrote as follows of the author of ' Fair Em,' an 
anonymous production once attributed to Shakspere : — 

" The ass is made proud by this underhand brokery. And he that 
cannot write true English, without the help of clerks of parish 
churches, will needs make himself the father of interludes." — Preface 
to ' Farewell to Folly!' 

" Greene probably did not mean to accuse Shakespeare of theft, 
but only to charge him, a mere actor and an uneducated peasant, with 
intruding among authors." — Richard Simpson. 

2 No other actor is known at that time to have possessed large 
landed property, or aspired to any mark of social distinction. 



42 Bacon vs. Skakspere. 

And told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes 

The sluggish, gaping auditor devours ; 
He marks not whose 'twas first, and after times 

May judge it to be his, as well as ours." 

Ben yonson. 

This famous epigram, by Ben Jonson, was first 
printed with many others of his in i6i6, but was 
written several years earher, perhaps, as Mr. Thomas 
W. White in ' Our Enghsh Homer ' conjectures, in 
1598. That Shakspere is meant appears not only 
from other and similar references to him from the 
^ same pen (to be cited hereafter) ^ but also from the 
following considerations : — 

1. This " Poet-Ape " masqueraded as the "chief" 
dramatist of the age. 

2. He had acquired wealth. 

3. He had the habit of appropriating to his own 
use, freely and unscrupulously, the writings of others. 

We add one more testimony of the same tenure. 
We omitted it from our computation, given above, 
for the reason that it is not personal enough to fall 
directly within the scope of our argument. Never- 
theless, it confirms in an unmistakable manner the 
existence at that time of some great imposture on the 
stage : — 

F. " Our age doth produce many such, one of the greatest 
being a stage-player, a man with sufficient ingenuity for imposi- 
tion." — Confessio Fraternitatis, Chap. XII. (anon. 161 5). ^ 

1 See pp. 93-108. 

2 It has been contended by a German writer that the person re- 
ferred to as a stage-player by the author of the Confessio was one 
Heinrich Khunrath ; but Khunrath was not a stage-player and, at 
the time when the Confessio was published, had been dead fourteen 



William Shakspere. 43 

Excepting some further statements made by Ben 
Jonson (which we shall give in their proper place), 
and apart from the official records of baptism, mar- 
riage, and death, of transfers of property, of suits at 
law, and of two fraudulent and abortive applications 
for a title, these are all the references to be found in 
contemporaneous literature to William Shakspere, 
the man. Every one of them implies that he was -f 
an impostor. Not a word, not the remotest hint 
from friend or foe within the circle of his acquaint- 
ance, of a transcendent genius, or, indeed, of any 
literary ability whatever ! 

"I cannot marry this fact to his verse." — Ralph Waldo 
Emerson. 

" A mere fabulous story, a bUnd and extravagant error. — 
Schlegel. 

" To this individuality we tack on a universal genius, which 
is about as reasonable as it would be to take the controUing 
power of gravity from the sun and attach it to one of the aster- 
oids." — Whipple's Literature of the Age of Elisabeth, p. 36. 

" A miraculous \jic~\ miracle." — Richard Grant White. 

"What! are we to have miracles in sport? . . . Does God 
choose idiots by whom to convey divine truth to man.?" — 
Coleridge. 

years. The theory seems to be utterly without foundation. It ap- 
pears, also, that in the next edition of the book this passage was 
omitted, as though some one, influential in Rosicrucian circles, con- 
sidered it dangerous, even in its obscurity. 



III. 

FRANCIS BACON. 

" If there was a Shakespeare of earth, as I suspect, there 
was also one of heaven ; and it is of him that we desire to 
know something.''' — Hallam. 

" Shakespeare is a voice merely ; who and what he was 
that satig, that sings, we know not.'' — Ralph Waldo 
Emerson. 

" The apparition k?iown to modertis as Shakespeare.''' — 
James Russell Lowell. 

I. Setting aside Shakspere, Francis Bacon was 
the most original, the most imaginative, and the 
most learned man of his time. 

y " The most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever 
been bestowed on any of the children of men." — Macaulay. 

" The great glory of literature in this island, during the reign 
of James, was my Lord Bacon." — Hume. 

" Lord Bacon was the greatest genius that England, or per- 
haps any other country, ever produced." — Pope. 

"One of the most colossal of the sons of men." — G. L. 
Craik. 

" Crown of all modern authors." — George Sandys. 

*' He possessed at once all those extraordinary talents which 
were divided amongst the greatest authors of antiquity. He 
had the sound, distinct, 'comprehensive knowledge of Aristotle, 
with all the beautiful lights, graces, and embellishments of 
Cicero. One does not know which to admire most in his writ- 




w 



V 



Francis Bacon at the Ace of Nine. 



Francis Bacon. 47 

ings, the strength of reason, force of style, or brightness of 
imagination." — Addison. 

" Next to Shakespeare, the greatest name of the Elizabethan 
age is that of Bacon. Undoubtedly, one of the broadest, 
richest, and most imperial of human intellects." — E. P. 
Whipple. 

"If we compare what may be found in the sixth, seventh, and 
eighth books of the ' De Augmentis,' in the ' Essays,' the 
'History of Henry VII.,' and the various short treatises con- 
tained in his works on moral and political wisdom, and on 
human nature, with the rhetoric, ethics, and politics of Aris- 
totle, or with the historians most celebrated for their deep 
insight into civil society and human character, — with Thucydi- 
des, Tacitus, Philippe de Comines, Machiavel, Davila, Hume, 
— we shall, I think, find that one man may almost be compared 
with all of these together." — Hallain. 

" The wisest, greatest of mankind." — Ibid. 

" Columbus, Luther, and Bacon are, perhaps, in modern 
times the men of whom it may be said with the greatest proba- 
bility that, if they had not existed, the whole course of human 
affairs would have been varied." — Edinhirgh Review. 

" When one considers the sound and enlarged views of this 
great man, the multitude of objects to which his mind was 
turned, and the boldness of his style which unites the most 
sublime images with the most rigorous precision, one is dis- 
posed to regard him as the greatest, the most universal, and the 
most eloquent of philosophers." — WAlembert. 

" His imagination was fruitful and vivid ; a temperament of 
the most delicate sensibility, so excitable as to be affected by 
the slightest alterations of the atmosphere." — Montagu. 
-■^ " He belongs to the realm of the imagination, of eloquence, 
of jurisprudence, of ethics, of metaphysics ; his writings have 
the gravity of prose, with the fervor and vividness of poetry." — 
Prof. Welsh. 

" Who is there that, hearing the name of Bacon, does not 
instantly recognize everything of genius the most profound, of 
literature the most extensive, of discovery the most penetrating, 
of observation of human life the most distinguishing and 
refined ? " — Edmund Burke. 



48 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

" Shakespeare and the seers do not contain more expressive 
or vigorous condensations, more resembling inspiration ; in 
Bacon, they are to be found everywhere." — Taine. 
y " No other author can be compared with him, unless it be 
-'"' Shakespeare." — Prof . Fowler. 

" He was a genius second only to Shakespeare." — Prof. 
Church. 

"Bacon little knew or suspected that there was then existing 
(the only one that ever did exist) his superior in intellectual 
power." — Walter Savage Landor. 

Addison, referring to a prayer composed by Bacon, says that 
V " for elevation of thought and greatness of expression it seems 
rather the devotion of an angel than that of a man." 

Prof. Fowler pronounces this prayer " the finest bit of com- 
position in the English language." 

II. Bacon came of a family eminent for learning. 
His father, Nicholas Bacon, was Lord Chancellor and 
Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth; his 
mother, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor of 
Edward VI. 

Of Bacon's mother, Macaulay writes: — 

" She was distinguished both as a linguist and a theologian. 
She corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewell, and translated 
his ' Apologia ' from the Latin so correctly that neither he nor 
Archbishop Parker could suggest a single alteration. She also 
translated a series of sermons on fate and free-will from the 
Tuscan of Bernardo Ochino. Her sister, Katherine, wrote 
Latin hexameters and pentameters which would appear with 
credit in the ' Musas Etonenses.' Mildred, another sister, was 
described by Roger Ascham as the best Greek scholar among 
the young women of England, Lady Jane Grey always ex- 
cepted." 

III. Bacon had a strong desire for public employ- 
ment, due, it is fair to infer, to the consciousness that 
he possessed exceptional powers for the service of 



x 



Degradation of the Stage, 49 

the state. It was a creditable ambition, though the 
methods then in vogue to gratify it would, according 
to modern standards, hardly be deemed consistent 
with personal honor. It is certain that the reputa- 
tion of being a poet, and particularly a dramatic poet, 
writing for pay, would have compromised him at 
court.^ In those days play-acting and play-writing 
were considered scarcely respectable. The first the- 
atre in London was erected in 1576, ten or twelve 
years only before the earliest production of ' Hamlet.' 
The Government, in the interest of public morals, 
frowned upon the performances. The Lord Mayor, 
in 1597, at the very time when the greatest of the 
" Shake-speare " Plays were coming out, denounced 
the theatre as a " place for vagrants, thieves, horse- 
stealers, contrivers of treason, and other idle and 
dangerous persons." One man published a book 
entitled " A Pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, 
Players, Jesters, and such like caterpillars." ^ An- 
other lamented because the people were given over 
to playing and dancing, instead of those exercises of 
the olden times, when "they went naked and were 
good soldiers ; when they fed upon roots and barks 
of trees, and could stand up to the chin many days 
in marshes without victuals." 

1 It is only in recent times that a professional author has come, 
under the most favorable circumstances, to be considered in England 
a gentleman. To look to any kind of literary composition for a reve- 
nue was, in the time of Bacon, sufficient to degrade any man from that y, 
rank in which, according to Blackstone, no one was tolerated who 
could not "live idly and without manual labor." — Commentaries, 

I. 406. 

2 The author of this book, Stephen Gosson, is commended for it by 
Mr. Allibone in his ' Dictionary of Authors.' 

4 



50 Bacon vs. Shakspei'e. 

Taine speaks of the stage in Shakespeare's day as 
" degraded by the brutahties of the crowd, who not 
seldom would stone the actors, and by the severities 
of the magistrates, who would sometimes condemn 
them to lose their ears." He thus describes the play- 
house, as it then existed : — 

" On a dirty site on the banks of the Thames rose the prin- 
cipal theatre, the Globe, a sort of hexagonal tower, surrounded 
by a muddy ditch. Over it was hoisted a red flag. The com- 
mon people could enter as well as the rich ; there were six- 
penny, two-penny, even penny seats ; but no one could gain 
admittance without money. If it rained (and it often rains in 
London), the people in the pit — butchers, mercers, bakers, 
sailors, apprentices — received the streaming rain upon their 
heads. I suppose they did not trouble themselves about it; 
it was not so long since that they had begun to pave the 
streets of London, and when men like these have had experi- 
ence of sewers and puddles, they are not afraid of catching 
cold. 

" While waiting for the piece, they amuse themselves after 
their fashion, — drink beer, crack nuts, eat fruits, howl, and 
now and then resort to their fists ; they have been known to 
fall upon the actors and turn the theatre upside down. At 
other times, when they were dissatisfied, they went to the tavern 
to give the poet a hiding, or toss him in a blanket. When the 
beer took effect, there was a great upturned barrel in the pit. a 
peculiar receptacle for general use. The smell rises, and then 
comes the cr\', ' Burn the juniper ! ' Thev burn some in a plate 
on the stage, and the heavy smoke fills the air. Certainly, the 
folk there assembled could scarcely get disgusted at anything, 
and cannot have had sensitive noses." 

It may easily be imagined that Bacon, considering 
his high birth, aristocratic connections, and aspirancy 
for official honors, and already projecting a vast 
philosophical reform for the human race, would have 



Matthew's Postscript. 51 

shrunk from open alliance with an institution like 
this.i 

IV. To his confidential friend, Sir Toby Matthew, 
Bacon was in the habit of sending copies of his books 
as they came from the press. On one of these occa- 
sions he forwards, with an air of mystery and half 
apologetically, certain works which he describes as 
the product of his " recreation," called by him, also, 
curiously, " works of the alphabet," upon which not 
even Mrs. Pott's critical acumen has been able to 
throw, from sources other than conjecture, any 
hght.^ In a letter addressed to Bacon by Mat- 
thew while abroad, in acknowledgment of some 

^ " It must be borne in mind tl^at actors occupied an inferior posi- 
tion in society, and that even the vocation of a dramatic writer was 
considered scarcely respectable." — HaUi-ajdl-PhtlUpps. 

" Lodge [a contemporary of ' Shake-speare '], who had never trod 
the stage, but had written several plays, speaks of the vocation of the 
playmaker as sharing the odium attaching to the actor. At this day 
we can scarcely realize the scorn which was thrown on all sides upon 
those who made acting a means of livelihood." — Dr. Ingleby. 

Under a law enacted in 1 572, any person, exercising the profession 
of an actor without license from two justices or the written protection 
of a nobleman, was liable to be arrested, to be whipped, and to have 
his right ear bored with a hot iron not less than one inch in cir- 
cumference. Professional actors were forbidden even the rites of 
Christian burial. 

2 " In 1623, Bacon writes to Sir Tobie Matthew about putting the 
' alphabet in a frame ; ' if this was their cipher, the frame was the 
1623 folio. Such enigmatical talk between two friends is evidence 
that they were both interested in some secret which they would not 
openly refer to." — Francis Fear on in Bacon Journal, I. 57. 

Printers lock up their type in ■i. frame. 

In still another letter to Matthew, written in 1604, at about the 
time that the great tragedies of ' Hamlet,' ' Macbeth,' ' King Lear,' 
and ' Othello ' were appearing, he apologizes for some neglect on 
the ground that his head had been "wholly employed upon inven- 
tion," i. e. upon works of imagination. 



V 



52 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

"great and noble token and favor," we find this 
postscript : — 

" The most prodigious wit that ever I knew, of my nation and 
of this side of the sea, is of your lordship's name, though he be 
known by another." 

It has been plausibly suggested that the " token of 
favor," sent to Matthew, was the folio edition of the 
" Shake-speare " Plays, published in 1623. It is cer- 
tain that Matthew's letter was written subsequently 
to January 27, 162 1.^ 

1 Various attempts have been made to break the force of this testi- 
mony. It has been urged that, as Bacon had been raised to the peer- 
age, he had acquired another name under which to publish his works. 
This seems too frivolous for serious remark. It has also been con- 
jectured that Matthew may have been in Madrid, where a certain 
Francisco de Quevedo was writing under a pseudonym. Unfortu- 
nately for this theory, the Spaniard (who has never become distin- 
guished, so far as we know, for "prodigious wit") retained the name 
of Francisco, the only part that suggested Bacon's, in his pseudonym. 
The simple truth is, Matthew's description exactly fits the " Shake- 
speare " Plays and Bacon's literary alias. 

Indeed, is it credible that Matthew would have written to Bacon, 
the Lord Chancellor of England, author of the Novum Or^anum 
(then published), and his benefactor, the only friend who stood by 
him, in his apostasy to Rome, when all others, even his own father 
and mother cast him off, that he had found on the Continent a person 
(then and ever since unknown) bearing his lordship's name, but 
superior to his lordship in learninc^ or wit ? Is it necessary to impute 
to Matthew so gross a violation of good taste, not to say a gratuitous 
insult to his correspondent ? On the contrary, who does not see that 
this same " most prodigious wit," the greatest (according to the post- 
script) of all the world, was at another time also described by Matthew 
in the following words : — 

" A man so rare in knowledge, of so many several kinds, indued 
with the facility and felicity of expressing it all in so elegant, signifi- 
cant, so abundant, and yet so choice and ravishing a way of words, of 
metaphors and allusions, as perhaps the world has not seen since it 



The Promus. 53 

V. Bacon kept a commonplace book which he 
called a Promus, now in the archives of the British 
Museum. It consisted of several large sheets, on 
which from time to time he jotted down all kinds of 
suggestive and striking phrases, proverbs, aphorisms, 
metaphors, and quaint turns of expression, found in 
the course of his reading^ and available for future 
use. With the exception of the proverbs from the 
French, the entries, one thousand six hundred and fifty- 
five in number, are in his own handwriting. These 
verbal treasures are scattered, as thick as the leaves of 
Vallombrosa, throughout the Plays. Mrs. Pott finds, 
by actual count, four thousand four hundred and four 
instances in which they are reproduced there — some 
of them in more or less covert or modified form — 
over and over again. We can almost see the archi- 
tect at work, imbedding these gems of beauty and 
wisdom in the wonderful structures to which, accord- 
ing to Matthew, he gave the name of another. 
While they appear to a limited extent in Bacon's 
prose works, they seem to have constituted a store- 
house of materials for particular use in the composi- 
tion of the Pla}'s. 

Two of these entries reappear in a single sentence 
in ' Romeo and Juliet.' One is the unusual phrase, 

was a world." — Address to the Reader, prefixed to Collection of English 
Letters, 1660. 

This, of course, was Francis Bacon. The two portraitures are 
identical. 

An amusing discussion, prompted by Mr. Appleton Morgan, on this 
subject was published in Shakespeariana (VIII. 44) in iSgi. In it two 
noted anti-Baconians endeavored to explain this postscript, but ended 
simply in refuting each other's theories. Our readers will find in this 
correspondence an addition to the comic literature of the age. 



54 Bacon vs. Shakspere, 

" golden sleep ; " and the second, the new word, 
" uproused," then added for the first time, like hun- 
dreds of others in the Plays, out of the same mint, to 
the verbal coinage of the realm. 

" But where unbruised youth with unstuffed brain 
Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign; 
Therefore, thy earliness doth me assure, 
Thou art uproused by some distemperature." — II. 3. 

To one familiar with the laws of chance, these co- 
incidences will fall little short of a mathematical 
demonstration. 

'• One of these entries would prove little or nothing, but any 
one, accustomed to evidence, will perceive that two constitute a 
coincidence, amounting almost to a demonstration, that either 
[i] Bacon and Shakespeare borrowed from some common and 
at present unknown source; or [2] one of the two borrowed 
from the other." — E. A. Abbott^ in his Introduction to Mrs. 
Poifs Edition of the Protnus. 

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the Promus 
is the group of salutatory phrases it contains, such as 
good-morning, good-day, and good-night, which had 
not then come into general use in England, but which 
occur two hundred and fifty times in the Plays. 
These salutations, however, were common at that 
time in France, where Bacon, as attache of the 
British Embassy, had spent three years in the early 
part of his life. To him we are doubtless indebted 
for these little amenities of speech.^ 

1 One or two specimens have been found in earlier literature, but 
the statement in the text is substantially correct. These salutations 
did not take root in English speech till they were implanted there by 
the author of the Plays. Their presence in Bacon's scrap-book is 
alone sufficient evidence that they were new. 



The Proinus. 55 

Particular attention is called to the entry "good-dawning," a 
style of address which Bacon failed to make popular, and which 
is found but once in the whole range of English literature out- 
side of the Promus, — in ' King Lear.' 

The date of the Promus (a strictly private record, published 
for the first time in 1882) was 1594; that of the play, 1606. In 
one, the seed ; the only plant from that seed, in the other. 

" The phrase ' good-dawning ' is found only once in Shake- 
speare, put into the mouth of the affected Oswald [Lear, II. 2], 
' Good-dawning to thee, friend.' l"he quartos are so perplexed 
by this strange phrase that they alter ' dawning ' into ' even,' 
although a little farther on Kent welcomes the ' comfortable 
beams of the rising sun.' Obviously ' dawning ' is right ; but 
did the phrase suggest itself independently to Bacon and 
Shakespeare ? 

♦' Again, Bacon has thought it worth while to enter the 
phrase 'good-morrow.' What does this mean? It is one of 
the commonest phrases in the plays of Shakespeare, occurring 
there nearly a hundred times ; why, then, did Bacon take note 
of a phrase so noteworthless, if it were at that time in com- 
mon use?" — E. A. Abbott > 

No dialogues are found in Bacon's acknowledged works, and 
yet the Promus abounds in colloquialisms, of which the follow- 
ing are specimens : — 

What else ? You put me in mind 

How now ? If that be so 

Say that Is it because 

Peradventure, can you ? Nothing less 

See, then, how Much less 

For the rest If you be at leisure 

Your reason The rather because 

the O, my lord, sir 
Believe it Believe it not 

1 would not you had done it Never, may it please you 
Repeat your reason Come to the point 

^ Dr. Abbott makes these admissions while disavowing Mrs. Pott's 
theory. 



56 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

Answer me directly Hear me out 

Answer me shortly Let me make an end of the tale 

What will you ? You take more than is granted 

Is it possible ? That is not so, by your favor 

You take it right What shall be the end ? 

Let it not displease you I object 

I distinguish I demand 

You go from the matter Well 

Verily, by my reason it is so You have forgot nothing 

We mention one more entry, No. 1096 : " law at 
Twickenham for the merry tales." Twickenham 
was a country-seat to which Bacon frequently re- 
tired, and where works of his " recreation " would 
naturally have been written. The plays in which 
legal principles are most frequently stated and 
applied were produced at or near the time of the 
Promus.^ 

Mr. Spedding published a few only of the Promus 
entries in his edition of Bacon's works, alleging that 
he could make nothing of them. And yet the Pro- 
mus was the only extended work he found in Bacon's 

1 In regard to proverbs, Mrs. Pott makes the following computa- 
tions : English proverbs in the Promus, 203 ; reproduced in the plays, 
152. French, Italian, and Spanish proverbs in the Promus, 240; 
reproduced in the plays, 150. Latin [Erasmus] proverbs in the 
Promus, 225 ; reproduced in the plays, 218. 

" It may be broadly asserted that the English, French, Italian, 
Spanish, and Latin proverbs, which are noted in the Promus and 
quoted in Shakespeare, are not found in other literature of the 
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries." — Preface to Bacon's 
Promus, p. 84. 

" There are about two hundred English terms of expression entered 
in the Promus. Of these, seventeen only have been discovered in 
works written between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, other 
than the prose works of Bacon and the plays." — Ibid., p. 83. 



Parallelisms. 57 

own handwriting. If Mr. Spedding had failed to 
understand the ' Novum Organum,' would he have 
omitted that also? 

" The real significance of the Promus consists in the enor- 
mous proportion of notes which Bacon could not possibly have 
used in his acknowledged writings ; the colloquialisms, dramatic 
repartees, turns of expression, proverbs, etc. Any biographer 
of Bacon, whatever his notions as to the Shakespearean author- 
ship, may be reasonably expected to offer some explanation of 
this queer assortment of oddments, and to find out, if possible, 
what use Bacon made of them ; and then our case becomes 
urgent." — R. M. Theobald. 

" Why Bacon wrote down phrases like this, here and there 
[in the Promus], seems inexplicable." — Richard Grant White. 

VI. Other internal evidences also point unmistak- 
ably to Bacon's pen. Peculiarities of thought, style, 
and diction are more important in a contested case of 
authorship than the name on the title-page, for there 
we find the author's own signature in the very fibre 
of his work. We have only to hold the Plays, as it 
were, up to the light, to see the water-mark imprinted 
in them. To elucidate this point, we ofi'er the fol- 
lowing parallelisms: — 

FROM SHAKESPEARE. FROM BACON. 

" There is a tide in the affairs " In the third place, I set 

of men down reputation, because of the 

Which, taken at the flood, peremptory tides and currents 

leads on to fortune ; it hath, which, if they be not 

taken in their due time, are sel- 

And we must take the cur- dom recovered." — Advance- ^ ^ ^ 

rent when it serves, ment of Learning. 
Or lose our ventures." 

Julius Ccesar, IV. 3, 



/, 



58 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



^ " To thine own self be true, 
And it must follow, as the 

night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false 
to any man." 

Hamlet, I. 3. 

"That strain again; — it had 
a dying fall : 
O, it came o'er my ear like 

the sweet south, 
That breathes upon a bank 

of violets, 
Stealing and giving odor." 
Twelfth Night, I. I 

" This majestical roof fretted 
with golden fire." 

Hamlet, II. 2. 



" By a divine instinct, men's 
minds mistrust 
Ensuing danger ; as, by proof, 

we see 
The waters swell before 
a boist'rous storm." 

Richard HI., II. 3. 

" Who having unto truth, by 
telling of it, 
Made such a sinner of his 

memor}', 
To credit his own lie." 

Tempest, I. 2. 



" Be so true to thyself as 
thou be not false to others." 
— Essay of Wisdom. 



'• The breath of flowers . . . 
comes and goes like the war- 
bling of music." — Essay of 
Gardens. 



" For if that great work- 
master had been of a human 
disposition, he would have cast 
the stars into some pleasant 
and beautiful works and orders, 
like the frets in the roofs of 
houses." — Advancement of 
Learning. 

" As there are . . . secret 
swellings of seas before a tem- 
pest, so there are in States." — 
Essay of Sedition. 



" With long and continual 
counterfeiting and with oft 
telling a lie, he was turned by 
habit almost into the thing he 
seemed to be ; and from a liar 
to a believer." — History of 
Henry V/l. 



Parallelisms. 



59 



" The ivy which had hid my 
princely trunk, 
And sucked my verdure out 
on 't." 

Tempest, I. 2. 

" Let him be his own carv'er." 
Richard II., II. 3. 

" I shall show the cinders of 
my spirits 
Through the ashes of my 

chance." 
Antony and Cleopatra, V. 2. 

" Lo ! as at English feasts, so 
I regreet ^ 
The daintiest lalt, to make 
the end most sweet." 

Richard II., I. 3. 



" It was ordained that this 
winding-ivy of a Plantagenet 
should kill the tree itself." — 
History of Henry VII. 

" You shall not be your 
own carver." — Advancement 
of Learning. 

■' The sparks of my affec- 
tion shall ever rest quick under 
the ashes of my fortune." — 
Letter to Falkland. 



" Let not this Parliament end 
like a Dutch feast in salt 
meats, but like an English feast 
in sweet meats." — Speech in 
Parliament, 1604. 



" Nothing almost sees mir- " Certainly, if miracles be 

acles the control over nature, they 

But misery." appear most in adversity." — 

King Lear, II. 2. Essay of Adversity^. 



" The rogue fled from me like 
quicksilver." 

2 Henry IV., II. 4. 



" When we our betters see 
bearing our woes. 
We scarcely think our mis- 
eries our foes. 



" It was not long but Per- 
kin, who was made of quick- 
silver (which is hard to im- 
prison), began to stir; for, de- 
ceiving his keepers, he took 
to his heels, and made speed to 
the sea-coast." — History of 
Henry VII. 

" Amongst consolations it is 
not the least to represent to a 
man's self like examples of 
calamity in others. If our bet- 
ters have sustained the like 



6o 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 




" The mind much suffrance 

doth o'erskip, 
When grief hath mates, and 

bearing fellowship. 
How light and portable my 

pain seems now, 
When that which makes me 

bend makes the king 

bow." 

King Lear, III. 6. 

" My Dionyza, shall we rest 
us here, 
And, by relating tales of 

other's griefs. 
See if 't will teach us to for- 
get our own 1 " 

Pericles, I. 4. 

" Of comfort, no man speak, . . . 
For God's sake, let us sit 

upon the ground 
And tell sad stories of the 
death of kings." ^ 

Richard 11., III. 2. 

" Honorificabilitudinitatibus." 
I^pve^s Labor 'j- Losi. 



" Had I but sensed my God 
with half the zeal 



events, we have the less cause 
to be grieved." —Letter to 
Bishop Andrews. 



" Honorificabilitudino.'' ^ — 
MS. Title-page of one of 
Bacon's Works. 

" Cardinal Wolsey said that 
if he had pleased God as he 



1 It will be observed that this is not the commonplace sentiment 
respecting companions in misery, but an opinion continually crop- 
ping out in Bacon and " Shake-speare," that one may find consolation 
in any misfortune by calling to mind similar experiences in the lives 
of others, particularly of those who in times past have done great 
deeds for humanity. 

2 This word is found in these two places only in all the world's 
literature. 



Parallelisms.. 



6i 



\ 



I served my king, he would 

not in mine age 
Have left me naked to mine 

enemies." 

Henry VIII., III. 2. 

" Ere my tongue 

Shall wound mine honor with 
such feeble wrong, 

Or sound so base a parle, my 
teeth shall tear 

The slavish motive of recant- 
ing fear, 

And spit it bleeding, in his 
high disgrace. 

Where shame doth harbor, even' 
in Mowbray's face." 

Richard II., I. i. 

" Viola. 'T is poetical. 
Olivia. It is the more likely 
to be feigned." 
Twelfth Night, I. 5. 

" How shall we stretch our 
eye when capital crimes,chew'd, 
swallow'd, and digested, ap- 
pear before us ? " — Henry V., 
II. 2. 

" I saw him run after a gilded 
butterfly ; and, when he caught 
it, he let it go again : and after 
it again." ^ — Coriolanus, I. 3. 



had pleased the king, he had 
not been ruined." — Letter\_first 
draft'\ to King James. 



"What a proof of patience 
is displayed in the story told 
of Anaxarchus, who, when 
questioned under torture, bit 
out his own tongue (the only 
hope of information) and spat 
it into the face of the tyrant." 
— De A ugmentis. 



" Poetry is feigned histor}'.' 
— A dvancetnent of Learning. 



" Some books are to be 
tasted, others to be swallowed, 
and some few to be chewed 
and digested." — Essay of 
Studies. 

" To be like a child follow- 
ing a bird, which, when he is 
nearest, flyeth away and 'light- 
eth a little before: and then 
the child after it again." — Let- 
ter to Greville. 

1 Professor Nichol refers to this extraordinary parallelism in his 
Biography of Bacon, showing by date that Bacon could not have 
copied from " Shake-speare," nor " Shake-speare " from Bacon. The 
sentence from Bacon is found in a private letter, written in 1595, but 
not made public till 1657. The production of ' Coriolanus ' is as- 
signed to a date not earlier than 1610. Theplay was first printed in 1623. 



62 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



" I do much wonder that one 
man, seeing how much an- 
other man is a fool when he 
dedicates his behaviors to love, 
will, after he has laughed at 
such shallow follies in others, 
become the argument of his 
own scorn by falling in love." 
— Much Ado About Nothing., 
II. 3- 



" Amongst all the great and 
worthy persons whereof the 
memory remaineth, there is not 
one that hath been transported 
to the mad degree of love; 
which shows that great spirits 
and great business do keep out 
this weak passion." — Essay 
of Love. 



" Sil. Do you change color ? 
Val. Give him leave, madam ; 
he is a kind of chame- 
leon." 
Two Gentlemen of Verona, 
11.4- 

" King. How fares our cousin 

Hamlet? 

Hamlet. Excellent, i' faith ; 

of the chameleon's 

dish ; I eat the air." 

Hamlet^ III. 2. 



" If he be laid upon green, 
the green predominates ; if 
upon yellow, the yellow; laid 
upon black, he looketh all 
black. Some that have kept 
chameleons a whole year to- 
gether could never perceive 
that they fed upon anything but 
air." — Syl. Syl. 



/ " The moon sleeps with En- " The moon of her own ac- 

^ dymion." cord came to Endymion as he 

Merchant of Venice, V. i. was asleep." — De Augmentis. 



" So we grew together, 
Like to a double cherry." 
Midsummer Nighfs Dream, 

III. 2. 



" There is a cherry-tree that 
hath double blossoms." — Syl. 
Syl. 



" Have you a daughter? . . . 
Let her not walk i' th' sun." — 
Hamlet, II. 2. 



" Aristotle dogmatically as- 
signed the cause of generation 
to the sun." — Novum Or- 
ganum. 



Parallelisms. 



63 



Of Julius Caesar : 

" The foremost man of all 
this world." 

yulius Ccesar, IV. 3. 

" The noblest man 
That ever lived." — Ibid., III. i. 

" I am constant as the north- 
ern star, 

Of whose true fixed and rest- 
ing quality 

There is no fellow in the firma- 
ment. 

The skies are painted with un- 
number'd sparks ; 

They are all fire, and every 
one doth shine ; 

But there 's but one in all doth 
hold his place. 

So in the world ; 't is furnished 
well with men, 

And men are flesh and blood, 
and apprehensive ; 

But in the number I do know 
but one 

That, unassailable, holds on 
his rank, 

Unshaked of motion." — Ibid. 

" When we were boys, 
Who would believe that there 

were mountaineers 
Dew-lapped like bulls, whose 
throats had hanging at 'em 
Wallets of flesh ? " 

Tempest, III. 3. 

" Idle weeds that grow 
In our sustaining corn." 

King Lear, IV. 4. 



" The most excellent spirit, 
his ambition reserved, of the 
world." — Imago Civilis Julii 
CcEsaris. 

" A man of a great and noble 
soul." — Ibid. 

" He [Julius Caesar] referred 
all things to himself, and was 
the truest centre of his own 
actions. — Ibid. 



" The people that dwell at 
the foot of snow mountains, 
or otherwise upon the ascent, 
especially the women, by drink- 
ing snow-water, have great bags 
hanging under their throats." 
— Natural History. 

" There be certain corn- 
flowers which come seldom or 
never in other places unless 
they be set, but only amongst 
corn." — Ibid. 



64 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



" 111 mayst thou thrive, if thou 
grant any grace." 

Richard II., V. 3. 

"What! wouldst thou have 

a serpent sting thee 

tvirice ? " 

Merchant of Venice, IV. i. 

" Go thou, and, like an execu- 
tioner, 
Cut off the head of too-fast- 
growing sprays. 
That look too lofty in our 
commonwealth." 

Richard II., III. 4. 



Bir. By Jove, I always 
took three threes 
for nine. 

Cost. O Lord, sir, it were 

pity you should get 

your living by 

reckoning, sir." 

Love''s Labor V Lost, V. 2. 



" It was to show my skill, 
That more for praise than 

purpose meant to kill. 
And, out of question, so it 

is sometimes ; 
Glory grows guilty of de- 
tested crimes, 



"He who shows mercy to his 
enemy denies it to himself." — 
Advancement of Learning. 



" Periander, being coun- 
selled with how to preserve a 
tyranny newly usurped, went 
into his garden and topped all 
the highest flowers, signifying 
that it consists in the cutting 
off and keeping low of the no- 
bility and grandees." — Ibid., 
Book II. 

" Philip of Macedon, when 
he would needs overrule and 
put down an excellent musician 
in an argument touching music, 
was well answered by him 
again. " God forbid, sir," saith 
he, " that your fortune should 
be so bad as to know these 
things better than I." — Ibid., 
Book VII. 

" I am of his opinion that 
said pleasantly that it is a 
shame to him that is a suitor 
to the mistress to make love to 
the waiting woman." 1 — The 
Apology. 



1 It is every one's duty, Bacon often said, to cultivate virtue, not for 
fame or praise, but for virtue's own sake. He makes a note of this in 
the Promus, where he calls praise the handmaid (waiting woman), 
and virtue the mistress. The two forms of expression, quoted above, 
constitute a binary star. 



Parallelisms. 



65 



When for fame's sake, for 
praise, an outward part, 

We bend to that the work- 
ing of the heart. 

And I, for praise alone, now 
seek to spill 

The poor deer's blood, that 
my heart means no ill." 
Love's Labor 'j" Lost, IV. i. 

" But sweetest things turn sour- 
est by their deeds ; 
Lilies that fester smell far 
worse than weeds." 

Sonnet XCIV. 

" This is th' imposthume- of 

much wealth and peace, 

That inward breaks, and 

shows no cause without 

Why the man dies." 

Hamlet, IV. 4. 

" I am never weary when I 
hear sweet music. 
The reason is, your spirits 
are attentive." 
Merchant of Venice, V. i . 

" To take arms against a sea 
of troubles, 
And, by opposing, end 
them."i 

Hamlet, III. 4. 



" The best things are in their 
corruption the worst ; the sweet- 
est wine makes the sharpest 
vinegar." — Charge against 
Robert, Earl of Somerset. 

"He that turneth the humors 
back and maketh the wound 
bleed inwards endangereth ma- 
lign ulcers and pernicious im- 
posthumations." — Essay of 
Seditions. 

" Some noises help sleep, as 
— soft singing ; the cause is, 
they move in the spirit a gentle 
attention . ' ' — Natter al History. 

" He came with such a sea 
of multitude upon Italy." — 
Apothegm, No. 242. 



1 This singular metaphor has caused commentators great perplex- 
ity. The sight of a man advancing against ocean waves with a sword 
or needle gun would not be, it must be confessed, an edifying spec- 
tacle. Pope, therefore, proposed to read a j/if^^ of troubles; Forest 
so rendered it on the stage. Another commentator preferred an 
assail of troubles. It requires, however, but a glance at Bacon's writ- 
ings, in which the word sea is used over and over again for host or 
multitude, to redeem the passage. Bacon evidently adopted it from 
the Greek, kukwv ireXayos. 5 



66 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



" Sense sure you have, 
Else could you not have mo- 
tion."! 

Hamlet, III. 4. 
[So in the quarto, 1604; 
omitted in the folio, 1623.] 

" There 's a divinity that 
shapes our ends." 

Ibid. 

" Advantage is a better soldier 
than rashness." 

Henry K, III.6. 



" Some of the ancient philos- 
ophers could not conceive how 
there can be voluntary motion 
without sense." — De Aug- 
tnentis. 



" I cannot forget that the 
poet Martial saith, 'What di- 
vinity there is in chance ! ' " 2 — 
Letter to King Jaines. 

" If time give his Majesty 
the advantage, what need pre- 
cipitation to extreme reme- 
dies ? " — Letter to Villiers. 



"But this work, shining in 
itself, needs no taper." — 
Amendment of Laws. 



" With taper light 
To seek the beauteous eye 

of heaven to garnish. 
Is wasteful and ridiculous 
excess." 

King John, IV. 2. 

1 The commentators can make nothing of these lines also. One 
of them suggests that for "motion" we substitute w^^/zW/ ; another, 
emotion. Others still contend that the word " sense" must be under- 
stood to mean sensation or sensibility. Dr. Ingleby was certain that 
Hamlet refers to the Queen's wanton impulse. As to the omission 
in the folio, not even the most daring commentator has ventured to 
offer a remark. In Bacon's prose, however, we find not only an ex- 
planation of the passage in the quarto, but the reason why it was 
excluded from the folio. The ' Advancement of Learning' was pub- 
lished in 1605, the year after the quarto, but it contains no repudiation 
of the ancient doctrine that everything which has motion has sense. 
Indeed, Bacon had a lingering opinion that the doctrine is true, even 
as applied to the planets in the influence which they were supposed to 
exercise over the affairs of men. But in 1623 he published a new 
edition of the 'Advancement ' under the title of De Augmentis Scieii- 
tiarum, and therein expressly declared that the doctrine is untrue ; 
that there is motion in inanimate bodies without sense, but with what 
he called a kind of perception. The Shake-speare folio came out in 
the same year, and the passage in question, no longer harmonizing 
with the author's views, dropped out. 

2 " O quantum est casibus ingenium." 



Parallelisms. 



67 



" Brother, you have a vice of 
mercy in you, 
Which better fits a lion than 

a man." 
Troilus atid Cressida, V. 3. 

" To be wise and love exceeds 
man's might; that dwells 
with gods above." 

Ibid., III. 2. 

" Court holy-water in a dry 
house is better than this 
rain-water out o' door." 
King Lear, III. 2 [1606]. 



" Like bright metal on a sullen 
ground, 
My reformation, glittering 

o'er my fault. 
Shall show more goodly, and 

attract more eyes. 
Than that which hath no 
foil to set it off." 

I Henry IV., I. 2. 

" I know he would not be 
a wolf. 
But that he sees the Romans 
are but sheep." 

Julius CcBsar, I. 3. 

" Being seldom seen, I could 
not stir 
But, like a comet, I was won- 
dered at." 

I Henry IV., III. 2. 



" For of lions it is a received 
belief that their fury ceaseth 
toward anything that yieldeth 
and prostrateth itself." ^ — 0/ 
Charity. 

" It is impossible to love and 
be wise." — Essay of Love. 



"He was no brewer of holy 
water in court." [1592.] 

" Your lordship is no dealer 
of holy water, but noble ^ and 
real." — Letter to Salisbury 
[1607]. 

" We see in needle-works 
and embroideries it is more 
pleasing to have a lively work 
upon a sad and solemn ground 
than to have a dark and melan- 
choly work upon a lightsome 
ground." — Essay of Adver- 
sity. 

" Cato, the censor, said that 
the Romans were like sheep." 
— Advancement of Learning. 



" Wonder is the child of rar- 
ity." 2 _ val. Ter. 



it 



1 In this instance, as in many others, it requires Bacon's prose to 
explain " Shake-speare's " poetry. 

2 This conception of wonder, as a state of mind produced by any- 
thing (whether extraordinary or not) that is rare, was a favorite one 



68 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



" Love " Love must creep where it 

Will creep in service where cannot go." — Letter to King 

it cannot go." James. 
Two Centlejuen of Verona, 

IV. 2. 



O 



of 



great corrector 

mous times, 
Shaker of o'er-rank states, 

thou grand decider 
Of dusty and old titles, that 

heal'st with blood 
The earth when she is sick 

and cur'st the world 
O' the pleurisy of people."' ^ 
Two Noble Kinsmen, V. i. 



" I account no state flourish- 
ing but that which hath neither 
civil wars nor too long peace. 



" The cankers of a calm world 
and a long peace." 

I Henry IV., IV. 2. 



" States corrupted through 
wealth and too great length of 
peace." — Letter to the Earl 
of Rutland. 



with Bacon. We find it repeatedly in his prose works. We find it 
also in many of the plays. Henry IV. tells his son to keep himself as 
much as possible out of the people's sight in order that, whenever he 
is seen, he may excite greater applause. It is, at least, remarkable 
that a causal relation of so subtle a nature should occur over and over 
again in both sets of works. 

^ "I believe that .Shakespeare has expressed the true philosophy 
of war [!] in those magnificent verses in the ' Two Noble Kinsmen,' 
which are as unlike Beaumont and Fletcher as Michael Angelo's char- 
coal head on the wall of Farnesia is unlike Raphael." — fames Russell 
Lowell. 

" We cannot escape from a certain truth in Shakespeare's view of 
war that it is the great corrector of enormous times." — Pearson's Na- 
f tonal Life and Character, p. 140. 

We must add that the sentiment itself, pardonable perhaps in the 
seventeenth century but not in this, is as barbarous as it is illogical. 
Force has no moral quality. As well expect an earthquake to disturb 
a theorem in Euclid, or the guns of an iron-clad to shake the rule of 
three. 



J 



V 



Parallelis7ns. 



69 



" To be or not to be, that is 
the question." 

Hamlet, III. i. 



" Boult. I warrant you, mis- 
tress, thunder shall not so 
awake the beds of eels." — 
Pericles, IV. 2. 

" As the mournful crocodile 
With sorrow snares relenting 
passengers." 

2 Henry VI., III. 2. 

" Soothsayer : 
Therefore, O Antony, stay not 

by his side : 
Thy daemon, that 's thy spirit 

which keeps thee, is 
Noble, courageous, high, un- 

matchable, 
Where Caesar is not; but near 

him thy angel 
Becomes a Fear, as being 

overpowered : therefore. 
Make space enough between 

you." 
A ntony and Cleopatra, V. 2. 



1 Not translated from the original Greek into any other language 
till more than two hundred years after ' Hamlet ' was written. 

We give the original, and also a Latin version published at Amster- 
dam in 1835 : — 

" OuTOJr f) wdfu-irav ireXevai xp^'^f efri;' oiix'-" 
" Ergo vel esse omnino vel non esse necesse est." 

2 The ' Natural History ' was not printed till eleven years after 
Shakspere's death. It is clear, then, that Shakspere did not 
take the story from Bacon. It is almost equally clear that Bacon 



" To be or not to be, that is 
the alternative." — /'«r;//^«z- 
des.'^ [Specially commended 
by Bacon.] 

*' Upon the noise of thunder 
. . . fishes are thought to be 
frayed [terrified]." — Natural 
History. 

" It is the wisdom of croco- 
diles, that shed tears when 
they would devour." — Essay 
of Wisdom. 

" There was an Egyptian 
soothsayer that made Antonius 
believe that his genius, which 
otherwise was brave and con- 
fident, was, in the presence 
of Octavius Caesar, poor and 
cowardly ; and therefore he 
advised him to absent himself 
as much as he could, and re- 
move far from him." 2 — Nat- 
ural History. 



^ 



70 



Baco7i vs. Shakspere. 



^ 



" It is so very very late 
That we may call it early." 
Romeo and Juliet, III. 4. 



"It is not now late but 
early." — Essay of Death. 



It may be interesting, also, to compare some of the 
entries in Bacon's scrap-book with passages in the 
plays, as follows : — 



FROM " SHAKE-SPEARE." 

" One fire drives out one fire ; 
one nail, one nail." 

Coriolanus, IV. 7. 



FROM bacon's PROMUS. 

" To drive out a nail with a 
nail." 



" Losers will have leave " Always let losers have their 
To ease their stomachs with words." 
their bitter tongues." 



/ 



Titus Andronicus, III. I. 

" Happy man be his dole." 

Merry Wives, III. 4. 

" Pardon is still the nurse of 
second woe." 



" Happy man, happy dole." 

" He that pardons his ene- 
mies, the amner [bailiff] shall 



Measure for Measure, W. i. have his goods." 



" Of sufferance comes ease." " Of 

2 Henry /K, V. 4. ease." 



sufferance cometh 



" Call me not fool, till heaven 
hath sent me fortune." 
As You Like It, II. 7. 

" Thou bear'st thy heavy riches 
but a journey." 
Measure for Measure, III. i . 



" God sendeth fortune to 
fools." 



" Riches, the baggage of 
virtue." 



did not take it from " Shake-speare," for he adds a particular which 
is not in the play, viz. : " The soothsayer was thought to be suborned 
by Cleopatra to make Antony live in Egypt and other places remote 
from Rome." 



Parallelisms. 71 

" So the maid that stood in " He had rather have his 
the way for my wish shall show will than his wish." 
me the way to my will." 

Henry V., V. 2. 

■^ " Seldom cometh the better." " Seldom cometh the better." 

Richard III., II. 2. 

"Frost itself as actively doth '■'■ Frigus adurit^'' [Frost 
burn." burns.] 

Hamlet, III. 4. 

" The dissembler is a slave." " He who dissembles is not 

Pericles, I. i. free." 

>^ " A fool's bolt is soon shot." " A fool's bolt is soon shot." 

Henry K, III. 7. 

" Deceive more slyly than " Ulysses, sly in speech." ^ 
Ulysses could.' 

Z Henry VI., III. 2. 

" The mild glance which sly 
Ulysses lent." 

Lzicrece. 

' " Give sorrow leave awhile to " Our sorrows are our school- 
tutor me." masters." 
Richard II., IV. i. 

" For loan oft loses both itself " He who lends to a friend 
and friend." loses double." 

Hamlet, I. 3. 

" I '11 devil-porter it no further." " He is the devil's porter who 
Macbeth, II. 3. does more than what is re- 
quired of him." 

1 Dr. Theobald calls attention to the fact that this entry in the 
Promus is the sole instance in Bacon's prose works in which Ulysses 
is spoken of as sly, though in " Shake-speare " he is never alluded to 
otherwise. The entry seems to have been made with exclusive refer- 
ence to dramatic use. 

I 



72 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



" Goodness, growing to a pleu- 
risy, 
Dies in his own too much." 
Ha ff 2 let, IV. 7. 

" All 's well that ends well." 
Airs Well that Ends Well, 
IV. 4. 
" Pride must have a faU." 

Richard /I., IV. 5. 

" Love moderately ; long love 
doth so." 
Romeo and Juliet, 1 1 . 6. 

" Two, together weeping, make 
one woe." 

Richard II., V. i. 

" Every Jack became a gentle- 
man." 

Richard III., I. 3. 

" Your words and your perform- 
ances are no kin." 

Othello, IV. 2. 

" The latter end of a fray " Better come to the ending 

and the beginning of a of a feast than to the beginning 

feast." of a fray." 
I Henry /F.. IV. 2. 

" Good wine needs no bush." " Good wine needs no bush." 

As You Like It. 

"Thy nature, "In ways, commonly the 

It is too full o' the milk of nearest is the foulest." 

human kindness 
To catch the nearest way." 
Macbeth. I. 4. 

1 It should be borne in mind that many words, phrases, and senti- 
ments, now familiar to us, have been made so by " Shake-speare." 
Their simultaneous admission into Bacon's memorandum-book suffi- 
ciently attests the fact that they were then new to English readers. 
The above entry is a mere paraphrase of a biblical proverb. 



"So good that he is good for 
nothing." 



" All is well that ends well." 



" Pride will have a fall." ^ 

" Love me little, love me 
long." 

" Make not two sorrows of 
one." 

" Every jack would be a 
lord." 

" Saying and doing are two 
things." 



Parallelisms, 73 

" The inaudible and noiseless " The gods have woollen 
foot of time." feet." 

AlVs Well, V. 3. 

^ " The ripest mulberry." " Riper than a mulberry." 

Coriolamts, III. 2. 

" Do we must what force will " They that are bound must 
have us do." obey." 

Richard II., III. 3. 

" To hazard all our lives in one " You are in the same ship." 
small boat." 

I Henry VI., IV. 6. 

" Let him not know 't, and he 's " What the eye seeth not, 
not robb'd at all." the heart rueth not." 

Othello, III. 3. 

" Must bend his body, " A beck is as good as a 
If Caesar carelessly but nod dieu vous garde.'''' 
on him." 

yulius C^sar, I. 2. 

V " Dieu vous garde, monsieur." 
Twelfth Night, III. i . 

" Your bait of falsehood takes " Tell a lie to know a truth." 
this carp of truth." 

Hamlet, I. 2. 

" The strings of life " At length the string 

Began to crack." cracks." 

Lear, V. 3. 

" Thou hast quarrelled with a "A cough cannot hide it- 
man for coughing in the self." 
street." 
Romeo and yuliet, III. i . 

" Ay, sir, but ♦ while the grass " While the grass grows, the 
grows ' — the proverb is horse starveth." 

something musty." 

Hamlet. III. 2. 



74 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

" Out of heaven's benedic- '■ Out of God's blessing into 
tion the warm sun." 

To the warm sun.'" 

Lear, II. 2. 

" The world on wheels." " The world runs on wheels." 

Two Gentlemen of Verona, 
III. I. 

" Thought is free." " Thought is free." 

Tempest, III. 2. 

" To seek the beauteous eye of " To help the sun with Ian- 
heaven to garnish." terns." 
King John, IV. 2. 

" You go not, till I set you up " There is no better glass 
a glass than an old friend." 

Where you may see the in- 
most part of you." 

Hamlet, III. 4. 

" You shall not gauge me " Evening's speech is very 

By what we do to-night." different from the morning's." 

Merchant of Venice, II. 2. 

" Fortune . . . doth ebb and " Fortune changes like the 
flow like the sea, being gov- moon." 
emed, as the sea is, by the 
moon." 

I Henry IV., I. 2. 

" A giving hand, though foul, " Food is wholesome which 
shall have fair praise." comes from a dirty hand." 
Love''s Labor 'j Lost, IV. i. 

" As if increase of appetite "If you eat, appetite will 
had grown come." 

By what it fed on." 

Hamlet, I. 2. 

" If the cat will after kind, " It is the cat's nature and 
So be sure will Rosalind." the wench's fault." 
As You Like It, III. 2. 



Parallelisms. 75 

He woo'd in haste and means "He that resolves in haste 

to wed at leisure. repents at leisure." 
Taming 0/ the Shrew, III. 2. 

" I am quickly ill, and well, "A woman is ill whenever 

So Antony loves." she wishes, and whenever she 

Antony and Cleopatra, I. 3. wishes, she is well.'' 

" I am giddy ; ... I do fear " When ohe good follows 

That I shall lose distinction another, a man loses his bal- 

in my joys." ance." 
Troilus and Cressida, III. 2. 

" Make use of thy salt hours." " Life is a little salt-cellar." 
Timon of Athens, IV. 3. 

" When the sea is calm, all " Any one can be a pilot in 

boats alike fine weather." 
Show mastership in floating." 
Coriolamis, IV. i. 

" Beggars cannot choose." " Beggars should be no 

Taming of the Shrew, Ind. choosers." 

''''" Teach me to forget." " The art of forgetting." 
Romeo and Juliet, I . i . 

" Cres. Well, well. " Well." 1 
Pan. ' Well well ' ! " 

Troilus and Cressida, I. 2. 

■^ " That is all one." " All is one." 
Merry Wives, I. i. 

s " Can so young a thorn begin " A thorn is gentle when it 

to prick ? " is young." 
Henry VI., V. 5. 

^ " The peculiarity of the use of this word consists in the fact that 
Shakespeare uses it both as continuing a conversation and as co7iclud- 
ins^ it ; other authors, previous and contemporary, in the first manner 

only." — Mrs. Pott's Edition of the Prottuis, page 168. 



76 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



" Coal black is better than an- 
other hue, 
In that it scorns to take an- 
other hue." 
Titus Andronicus, IV. 2. 
" Not to be abed after mid- 
night is to be up betimes ; and 
diliiciilo surgere, thou know- 
est."— Twelfth Night, II. 3. 
" Romeo. 
Good morrow. 

What early tongue so sweet 
saluteth me .'' 



" Black will take no other 
hue." 



" Diluculo 
brium " [sic]. 



sttrgere salu- 



Rome. 

Good morrow. 

Sweet, for speech in the 
morning [i. e. morning 
speech is to be noted as 
sweet]. 

Early rising. 



So soon to bid good morrow 

to thy bed. 
Where care lodges, sleep will Lodged next. 

never lie. 
There golden sleep doth Golden sleep. 

reign. 
Thou art uproused by some Uprouse." ^ 

distemperature." ^ 

Rotneo and yuliet, II. 3. 

The foregoing lists might be extended almost 
indefinitely ; but enough is given to show that on 

^ The above disconnected sentences from ' Romeo and Juliet ' are 
taken from within a space of eleven consecutive lines. The corre- 
sponding entries in the Promus were also made substantially at one 
time ; they are found very near together. We find the earliest notice 
of the play to have been under date of 1597, or immediately after this 
curious preliminary study for a part of it was recorded by Bacon in 
his private memorandum book. It seems to us as undeniable as any 
theorem in Euclid that the writer of the Promus had something to do 
with the composition of ' Romeo and Juliet.' 

'■^ This was the first (private) appearance of this word in the Eng- 
lish language ; its second (public) appearance was two or three years 
later — in the play. 




'2z((Myi fcvyi^ 








Signatures of Francis Bacon and Others. 



Parallelisms. 79 

these two minds (if there were two) fell the light of 
intelligence, in repeated flashes, at the same exact 
angle. The cumulative force of these examples, 
taken in connection with the solid prejudice against 
which, in some instances, they break in vain, re- 
minds us of the charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo, 
the "irresistible meeting the immovable."-^ 

" It is safe to say that no such Hst can be produced from the 
writings of any other two authors of that age or of any age ; 
no similarity of life, genius, or studies ever produced an iden- 
tity like this. . . . The coincidences are not merely such as 
might be attributed to the style and usage of that time ; they 
extend to the scope of thought, the particular ideas, the modes 
of thinking and feehng, the choice of metaphors, the illustrative 
imagery, and those singular peculiarities, oddities, and quaint- 
nesses of expression and use of words which everywhere and at 
all times mark and distinguish the individual writer." — 
Hohnes' Authorship of Shakespeare. 

If we consider, also, the difference between the two men in 
birth, education, and mode of hfe, these similarities become, on 
the commonly accepted theory, absolutely inexplicable. In 
any view, however, they are so extraordinary that John Weiss 
(who has produced the ablest argument against the Baconian 
theory we have ever read) is compelled to admit that the two 
authors were probably close companions in literary work. 

" Does any one dare to say that Shakespeare and Bacon did 
not compare notes upon many subjects ? Many of the reputed 
parallelisms are indirect traces of such an intercourse. — Wit, 
Humor, and Shakespeare, p. 261. 

" When we come to internal evidences, afforded by a com- 
parison of what Bacon has written and what Shakespeare 
wrote, some quoted coincidences are assuredly very striking. 
Enough of unimpeachable force has been got together to dis- 
close a really remarkable similarity of phrase, of metaphor, of 

^ The number of parallelisms similar to the above, already found 
in these two sets of works, exceeds a thousand. 



/' 



8o Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

opinions, and of inferred attainments. What perhaps affords 
the nearest approach to a convincing argument for a common 
authorship, is the use of the same out-of-the-way quotations and 
the reproduction of precisely the same errors." — The \_London'\ 
Standard, May i, 1888. 

" Some of these parallelisms are not coincidences, but some- 
thing like identities." — Appleton Morgan. 

7. Bacon's love of flowers perfumed his whole life. 
It was to him, as he said, " the purest of human 
pleasures." Of the thirty-five species of garden 
plants mentioned in the Plays, he enumerates thirty- 
two in his prose works, bending over them, as it 
were, lovingly, and, like the dramatist, noting the 
seasons in which they bloom. In both authors, taste 
and knowledge go hand in hand. 

This point will bear elaboration, for the two meth- 
ods of treatment seem to be mutually related, like 
the foliage of a plant and the exquisite blossom. 
Bacon says : " I do hold it, in the royal ordering of 
gardens, there ought to be gardens for all the months 
of the year, in which severally things of beauty may be 
then in season ; " and with this end in view, he pro- 
ceeds to classify plants according to their periods of 
blooming. 

" Shake-speare," on his part, introduces to us a 
beautiful shepherdess distributing flowers among her 
friends, — to the young, the flowers of spring; to 
the middle-aged, those of summer; while the flowers 
that bloom on the edge of winter are given to the 
old. What is still more remarkable, the groupings 
in both are substantially the same. One commen- 
tator has even proved the correctness of a disputed 
reading in the play by reference to the correspond- 
ing passage in the essay. 



Lists of Flowers. 



8i 



We pre'sent the two lists, side by side, for compar- 
ison, as follows : — 



FROM SHAKESPEARE. 

" Now, my fair'st friend, 
I would I had some flowers o' 

th' spring, that might 
Become your time of day; and 

yours ; and yours, 

daffodils^ 
That come before the swallow 

dares, and take 
The winds of March with 

beauty; violets, dim, 
But sweeter than the lids of 

Juno's eyes, 
Or Cytherea's breath ; pale 

primroses, 
That die unmarried ere they 

can behold 
Bright Phoebus in his strength, 

a malady 
Most incident to maids ; bold 

ox lips and 
The crown imperial; lilies of 

all kinds, 
Tht Jlower-de-htce being one. 

" Sirj the year growing an- 
cient — 

Not yet on summer's death, 
nor on the birth 

Of trembling winter — the fair- 
est flowers o' th' season 

Are our carnations and 
streaked gillifloiver. 

Hot lavender, mint, savory, 
marjoram ; 



FROM BACON. 

" There foUoweth, for the lat- 
ter part of January and Feb- 
ruary . . . crocus vernus, both 
the yellow and the gray ; Prim- 
roses, anemones, the early tulip, 
the hyacinthus orientalis. For 
March, there come violets, es- 
pecially the single blue, which 
are the earliest ; the yellow 
daffodil, the daisy. In April, 
follow the double white violet, 
the wall-flower, the stock gilli- 
flower, the cowslip, Jiower-de- 
luces, and lilies of all natures; 
rosemary-flowers, the tulip, 
the double peony, the pale 
daffodil, the French honey- 
suckle." 



" In May and June, come 
pi7iks of all sorts, specially 
the blush-pink ; roses of all 
kinds, except the musk, which 
comes later ; honeysuckles, the 
French marigold, flor-Africa- 
nus, vine flowers, lavender in 
flowers, the sweet sat3Tian. In 
July, come gilliflowers of all 
varieties, musk-roses." 



82 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



The marigold, that goes to bed 

with th' sun, 
And with him rises, weeping ; 

these are flowers 
Of middle summer, and I think 

they 're given 
To men of middle age. 

" Reverend sirs. 
For you there 's rosemary and 

rue ; these keep 
Seeming and savor all the win- 
ter long." 

Winter's Tale, IV. 3. 



" For December and Janu- 
ary and the latter part of No- 
vember, you must take such 
things as are green all winter : 
holly, ivy, rosemary, lavender, 
periwinkle, and sweet marjo- 
ram." 1 — Essay on Gardens. 



The essay was first printed in 1625, nine years after Shak- 
spere's death. It seems reasonable to conclude that Bacon 
[who had made a study of gardens all his life], either borrowed 
from Shakspere or wrote the play. 

" It is not probable that Bacon would have anything to learn 
of William Shakespeare concerning the science of gardening." 
— Spedding. 

Vni. In 1867 there was discovered in a private 
library in London a box of old papers, among 
which were some manuscripts of Francis Bacon, 
bound together in the form of a volume. In the 
table of contents on the title-page, among the names 
of other compositions known to be Bacon's, but not 
in his handwriting, appear those of two of the 
" Shake-speare " plays, — Richard II. and Richard 
III., — though the plays themselves have been ab- 
stracted from the book.^ Judge Holmes adds the 

1 Trees and fruits only omitted. 

2 In the table of contents we find, also, the title of one of Nash's 
plays, ' The Isle of Dogs,' never published. But Nash did not write 
the whole of this play. He complained that several scenes in it had 



Northumberland MSS> 83 

following piece of information in regard to this 
discovery : — 

" The blank space at the side and between the titles is 
scribbled all over with various words, letters, phrases, and 
scraps of verse in English and Latin, as if the copyist were ^^ 
merely trying his pen, and writing down whatever first came 
into his head. Among these scribblings, beside the name of 
Francis Bacon several times, the name of William Shakespeare 
is written eight or nine times over." 

It is a singular coincidence that the extraordinary- 
word, " honorificabilitudino," found here, occurs with 
a slight change of ending in ' Love's Labor's Lost.' 
Also, the line, " revealing day through every cranny 
peeps," from the " Shake-speare " poem, ' Lucrece,' 
appears among the scribblings.^ 

The best experts assign the date of these pen 
performances, in which the names of Bacon and 
Shakespeare flowed so naturally, and, on the part 
of the writer, so unconsciously and spontaneously, to 
the age of Elizabeth. 

" The only place in the world where we may be sure the 
manuscript of a " Shake-speare " play once existed is Bacon's 
portfolio." — R. M. Theobald. 

been interpolated by another. The presence of the MS. among 
Bacon's papers sufficiently indicates whose hand had supplemented 
the author's. Furthermore, following the title of this play, appears 
the abbreviated word, "frmnt" (fragment), as though the interpolated 
part only had been included in the collection. 

1 The line in ' Lucrece ' is as follows : — 
■ " Revealing day through every cranny spies." 

As this does not end so happily as the line in the scribblings, it 
has been suggested that the latter may represent the form as first 
presented to the mind of the poet, if not so written, but subsequently 
changed under the exigency of rhyme. 





Mr. Francis Bacon 




of tribute or giving what is due. 




The Praise of the worthiest Virtue 




The Praise of the worthiest Affection 




The Praise of the worthiest Power 


Anthony 


The Praise of the worthiest Person 




Mr. Francis 


Multis annisjam transactis 
Nulla fides est in pactis, 
Mell in ore, verba lactis ; 


Francis Bacon 
Francis 

Earl of Arundell's letter to the Queen 


Fell in corde,fraus infactis. 


Speeches for my lord of Essex at the tilt. 




A Speech for my lord of Sussex tilt. 


honorificabilitudino 


Leicester's Commonwealth, Incerto auth. 




Orations at Gray's Inn Revels 




Bacon 




By Mr. Francis Bacon 




Essays by the same author 




William Shakespeare 


Baca 


Richard the Second. Shakespeare 




Richard the Third 


Bacon 


Asmund and Cornelia 


Asmiind and Cornelia 


Isle of Dogs, frmnt. 


speare revealing^ 

day through . 


by Thomas Nash. 


every cranny 


William Shakespeare 


peeps 


^ Sh hakespeare 


Shak 


^ William Shakespeare 


Sh Shak 


William Shakespeare 

Shakespeare 
Willi William 

1 



Key to Cover of Northumberland MSS. 



Concealed Poet. 85 

IX. At the death of Queen Elizabeth, John Davies, 
the poet and courtier, went to Scotland to meet 
James I. To him, while on the journey northward, 
Bacon addressed a letter, asking kind intercession in 
his behalf with the king, and expressing the hope, in , 
closing, that he (Davies) would be "good to con-l^ 
cealed poets." This expression indicates that Ba- 
con's acknowledged writings do not reveal the whole 
man.^ Something in him of a poetic nature was 
unquestionably hid from the mass of his contempo- 
raries. John Aubrey, Milton's friend, who was born 
the year after Bacon's death, and who derived his 
knowledge of Bacon from those who knew the chan- 
cellor personally, states that " his lordship was a 
good poet, but concealed."^ 

We find a similar hint in Florio's ' World of Words,' 
published in 1598. Florio was a learned Italian, and 
a familiar figure in the literary and court circles of 
London. He is now known to fame as translator of 
Montaigne's Essays into English. That he was on 
terms of intimacy with Bacon is now a known fact, 
for in some of the Pembroke MSS., recently pub- 

1 " The allusion to ' concealed poets ' I cannot explain." — Sped- 
ding's Life of Bacon, Vol. III. p. 190. 

2 As usual, critics differ in their estimates of Aubrey : — 

" His character for veracity has never been impeached ; and as a 
very diligent antiquary his testimony is worthy of attention." — 
Malone. 

" He was a very honest man, and most accurate in his account of 
matters of fact." — Toland. 

" A shiftless person, roving, and magotie-headed, and sometimes 
little better than crazed." — Anthony Wood. 

" Aubrey thought little, believed much, and confused everything." 
— Gifford. 



86 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

lished, he figures as a member, with Herbert, 
Hobbes, and Jonson, of Bacon's hterary bureau at 
Gorhambury. In the preface to the above-mentioned 
work, Florio commends a certain sonnet, written, as 
he says, by a " friend " of his, " who loved better to 
be a poet than to be counted so." Professors Minto 
and Baynes, judging from internal evidences, concur 
in opinion that the author of the " Shake-speare " 
plays wrote this sonnet.^ 

1 Edward Arber, in the preface to his valuable edition of Bacon's 
Essays, says that Anthony Bacon visited Bordeaux and contracted a 
friendship with Montaigne in 1582, two years after the first publica- 
tion of Montaigne's Essays. " Without doubt," he adds, " this ac- 
quaintanceship resulted in these French Essays being early brought 
under [Francis] Bacon's notice." We know that the author of ' Tlie 
Tempest ' was familiar with them, as the following close parallelism 
will show : — 

" For no kind of trafic " It is a nation that hath no 

Would I admit ; no name of mag- kind of trafic ; no knowledge of 

istrate ; letters ; ... no name of magis- 

Letters should not be known ; trate ; ... no use of service, of 

riches, poverty, riches, or of poverty; no con- 

And use of service, none ; con- tracts, no successions, no divi- 

tract, succession, dences ; no occupations, but idle ; 

Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vine- no respect of kindred, but com- 

yard, none ; mon ; no manuring of lands ; no 

No use of metal, corn, or wine, use of wine, corn or metal." — 

or oil ; Montaigne^ s Essays, I. Chap. 

No occupation ; all men idle. . . . XXX. 
All things in common." 

The Tetnpest, II. I. 
The above passage from ' The Tempest ' is plainly taken from 
Montaigne's Essays. " The identity of phrase in the play and the 
Florio translation indicate the latter as the source." — R. G. White, 
Shakespeare, II. 88. 

It may be pertinent to remark, in this connection, that the alleged 
autograph of Shakspere in a copy of Florio's ' Montaigne,' now in the 
British Museum, is beyond doubt a forgery. 



Want of Employment. 87 

X. With the exception of a brief but brilliant 
career in Parliament, and an occasional service in 
unimportant causes as attorney for the crown, Bacon 
seems to have been without employment from 1579, 
when he returned from France at the age of eighteen, / 
to 1597, when he published his first volume of 
Essays. Here were nearly twenty of the best years 
of his life apparently run to waste. The volume of 
Essays was a small i2mo, containing but ten out 
of the fifty-eight sparkling gems which subsequent 
editions gave to the admiration and delight of pos- 
terity. His philosophical works, excepting a slight 
sketch in 1585, did not begin to appear till several 
years later. From 1597 to 1607, when he was ap- 
pointed Solicitor General, he was again, so far as we 
know, substantially unemployed, — a period of ten 
years, contemporaneous with the appearance of the 
great tragedies of Hamlet (rewritten), Julius Caesar, 
King Lear, and Macbeth. In the mean while he was 
hard pressed for money, and, failing to get relief 
(unhappily before the days of Samuel Weller) in a 
vain effort to marry a wealthy widow, he was twice 
actually thrown into prison for debt,^ 

That he was idle all this time, under great pecuni- 
ary pressure, his mind teeming with the richest 
fancy, it is impossible to admit. Such a hypothesis 
is utterly inconsistent with the possession of those 

1 On one of these occasions the debt was due to a Jewish money- 
lender, and was paid by Anthony, Francis' brother, who mortgaged his 
property for the purpose. At about that time appeared the great '-^y 
drama, ' The Merchant of Venice,' in which a money-lending Jew is 
pilloried for all time, and the debtor's friend, who also placed his 
property under mortgage on the occasion, was named Antonio. 



88 Baco7i vs. Shakspere. 

fixed, almost phenomenal habits of industry with 
which he afterward achieved magnificent results. On 
this point, indeed, we have interesting testimony 
from his mother. A woman of deep piety, mindful 
of the proprieties of her station in life, she evidently 
became alarmed over some mystery connected with 
her son. Probably she had a suspicion of its nature, 
for not even the genius that created ' Hamlet ' could 
subdue maternal instincts. In a letter to Anthony, 
under date of May 24, 1592, she expresses her solici- 
tude, as follows : — 

" I verily think your brother's weak stomach to digest hath 
been much caused and confirmed by untimely going to bed, and 
then musing nescio quid vihtn he should sleep." ^ 

At another time, when the two brothers were 
together at Gray's Inn, and full of enthusiasm, as 
she knew, for the wicked drama, she wrote, begging 

them — 

" Not to mum, nor mask, nor sinfully revel." 

It may be added that with his appointment to high 
office and advent into public life the production of 
the " Shake-speare " plays, for several years at least, 
suddenly terminated.^ 

1 Aubrey says it was his lordship's " working fancy " that kept him 
awake. 

'^ What a crushing argument our friends on the other side would 
have made against Scott's authorship of the Waverly novels, had a 
kind Providence sent them into the world fifty years earlier! Scott 
was a great poet, and previously to the publication of ' Waverly,' in 
the forty-third year of his age, he had never written a romance in 
prose. In 1814, at which time 'Waverly' made its mysterious ap- 
pearance, Scott published in two volumes a work on ' Border An- 
tiquities,' contributed articles on ' Chivalry ' and the ' Drama' to the 




tViii-j,i\ . B^^ikV sO 



Ben Jonson. 



Ben yonsons Testimony. 91 

XI. Ben Jonson was at one time Bacon's private 
secretary, and presumably in the secret, if there were 
any, of his employer's literary undertakings. In this 
fact we find the key to the exquisite satire of the 
inscription, composed by him and printed opposite 
" Shake-speare's " portrait in the folio of 1623, of 
which the following, in reference to the engraver's 
art, is an extract : — 

" Oh, could he but have drawn his wit 
As well in brasse as he hath hit 
His face, the print would then surpass 
All that was ever writ in brasse." 

The portrait is "a hard, wooden, staring thing" 
(Richard Grant White), stupid, inane, hideous, with 

Encyclopaedia Britannica, and edited the ' Life and Works of Dean 
Swift.' The latter publication, comprising nineteen volumes, was 
issued in the same week with ' Waverly.' In the following year, 
'Guy Mannering ' appeared; and also, from Scott, the two poems, 
' Lord of the Isles' and ' Field of Waterloo.' In 1816 came in quick 
succession from the Great Unknown the ' Antiquary,' ' Black Dwarf,' 
' Old Mortality,' and ' Tales of My Landlord,' first series ; and in the 
same year from Scott's pen, ' Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk ' and the 
'Edinburgh Annual Register.' The poem 'Harold the Dauntless' 
was published in January, 1817, preceded within thirty days by three 
of the above-named works of fiction. 

During all this time Scott was keeping " open house at Abbotsford 
in the old feudal fashion, and was seldom without visitors, entirely 
occupied to all outward appearance with local and domestic business 
and sport, building and planting, adding wing to wing, acre to acre, 
plantation to plantation, with just leisure enough for the free-hearted 
entertainment of his guests and the cultivation of friendly relations 
with his humble neighbors." 

He even mystified some of his most intimate friends by reviewing 
one of his own novels in the ' Quarterly,' going so far as to claim that 
" the characters of Shakespeare are not more exclusively human, not 
more perfectly men and women as they live and move, than those of 
this mysterious author." 



92 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

straight hair, while the bust at Stratford has curls. 
Is this a work so extraordinary that we must sigh 
because the artist did not depict the mind as well as 
the face of his subject ? Such a sentiment was very- 
appropriate under Bacon's beautiful likeness, taken at 
the age of seventeen, where yojison fowid it} but 
what a satire under Shakspere's ! No wonder he 
added, — 

" Look, 
Not on his picture, but his book." 

Indeed, it requires just this view of Jonson in his 
relations with the mysterious author of the plays to 
vindicate his character. We want a stroke of light- 
ning to clear the atmosphere around him. Down to 
the time of Gififord, a period of nearly two hundred 
years, his insincerity towards the reputed dramatist 
was a matter of almost universal comment among 
scholars. Dryden, Malone, Steevens, Chalmers, and 
others looked upon him for this reason as almost 
a monster of ingratitude and jealousy. In 1816, 
however, Gififord came to Jonson's defence with all 
the resources of his practised pen, and, if he did not 
succeed in driving his antagonists wholly from the 
field, he had the satisfaction, at least, of stretching 
several of them at full length upon it. 

It is the old story of the quarrel between two 
parties who were looking each upon a different side 
of the same shield. Jonson's testimony is self-contra- 
dictory. In the early part of his career he took one 

1 A miniature painted by Hilliard in 1578, and bearing the words, 
Si tabula daretur digna, animum mallem : " If one could but paint his 
mind 1 " 



Ben Jonsons Testimony. 93 

view of " Shake-speare " ; later on, another and a very- 
different one. The dividing hne may be drawn at or 
near the year 1620. Previous to that date Shakspere 
was to him, as to all other contemporaries who give 
us any glimpse of the man, an impostor, or, in the 
words of Richard Simpson, an " uneducated peasant," 
masquerading as a dramatist. Accordingly, his refer- 
ences to Shakspere during this period were caustic 
and bitter in the extreme. They were such as almost 
to preclude the possibility of any friendship between 
them.^ We have already cited the well-known epi- 
gram to Poet-Ape ;^ we purpose now to give two 
other extracts from Jonson's works, written at this 
time of his life, and to give them hi extenso, in order 
that our readers may judge fairly and intelligently of 
the use we shall make of them. 

The first is from the epilogue to ' Every Man in 
his Humor,' printed in 1616. The play was produced 
on the stage in 1598. 

" Though need make many poets, and some such 
As art and nature hath not bettered much, 
Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage, 
As he dare serve the ill customs of the age. 
Or purchase your delight at such a rate, 
As, for it, he himself must justly hate : 

1 The tradition that Shakspere was the means of securing for 
Jonson an introduction to the stage is unsupported by historical evi- 
dence. Gifford rejects the story as apocryphal. 

" It is my fixed persuasion (not lightly adopted, but deduced from a 
wide examination of the subject) that Jonson never received either 
patronage, favor, or assistance from Shakespeare." — Gifford's Preface 
to Jonson^s Works, p. ccli. 

- Page 35. 



94 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

To make a child now swaddled, to proceed 
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed. 
Past threescore years ; or, with three rusty swords, 
And help of some few foot and half-foot words, 
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars. 
And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars." 

That two of the historical plays of " Shake-speare " 
and ' The Winter's Tale ' are slightingly alluded to in 
the above can hardly be questioned. The reference 
to Perdita in the comedy is unmistakable. To repre- 
sent a babe in one act, grown to sweet sixteen in the 
next, was the most conspicuous violation of the Greek 
unities on the English stage at that time. Blinded by 
a very natural prejudice against the reputed author 
of the play, Jonson failed to see the exquisite beau- 
ties of the play itself. He declared that he would 
have hated himself, had he been the author of it.^ 

'The Poetaster' was produced in 1601. The lead- 
ing personage in it is Crispinus, a famous caricature, 
in which the use of uncouth words derived from the 
Latin, on the part of one or more of Jonson's rivals, 
is severely ridiculed. At the instance of Horace, 
who complained that many of these words were 
stolen from him, Crispinus is finally arrested and 
brought to trial before a Roman court, Julius Caesar 
himself being present and taking part in the pro- 
ceedings. The indictment is read, and then the fol- 

^ In his conversations with Drummond he again returned to the 
attack on the ' Winter's Tale.' " Shakespeare wanted art," he'laid, 
instancing the sea-coast of Bohemia as a proof, though he must have 
known that " Shake-speare " simply retained that much-abused item 
in geography from the novel on which the play was founded. See 
further on same subject, p. loi. 



Ben yonsons Testimony. 95 

lowing paper, duly acknowledged by defendant to be 
of his composition, is put in evidence : — 

" Ramp up my genius, be not retrograde ; 
But boldly nominate a spade a spade. 
What, shall thy lubrical and glibbery muse 
Live, as she were defunct, like punk in stews ! 
Alas ! that were no modern consequence. 
To have cothurnal buskins frighted hence. 
No, teach thy Incubus to poetize. 



Upon that puft-up lump of balmy froth, 

Or clumsie chilblained judgement ; that with oath 

Magnificates his merit ; and bespawls 

The conscious time, with humorous foam and brawls, 

As if his organons of sense would crack 

The sinews of thy patience. Break his back, 

O poets, all and some ! For now we list 

Of strenuous vengence to clutch the fist." 

Then comes the following remarkable scene: — 

CcBs. " Here be words, Horace, able to bastinado a man's ears. 
Hor. Ay. 

Please it, great Caesar, I have pills about me, 

Mixt with the whitest kind of hellibore, 

Would give him a light vomit, that should purge 

His brain and stomach of those tumorous heats, 

Might I have leave to minister unto him. 
C(Bs. O, be his ^sculapius, gentle Horace ! 

You shall have leave, and he shall be your patient. 

Virgil, 

Use your authority, command him forth. 
Virg. Cassar is careful of your health, Crispinus; 

And hath himself chose a physician 
* To minister unto you ; take his pills. 
Hor. They are somewhat bitter, sir, but very wholesome. 

Take yet another ; so ; stand by, they '11 work anon. 



96 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

Crisp. O ! 

Tib. How now, Crispinus? 

Cris. O, I am sick ! 

Hor. A basin ! a basin ! quickly ; our physic works. Faint 

not, man. 

Cris. Retrograde — reciprocal — incubus. 

CcES. What 's that, Horace ? 

Hor. Retrograde, reciprocal., and incubtis are come up. 

Gal. Thanks be to Jupiter ! 

Cris. O — glibbery — lubrical — defunct — O — ! 

Gal. They come up easy. 

Cris. O — O — ! 

Tib. What's that? 

Hor. Nothing yet. 

Cris. Magnificate — 

Mac. Magnificate I That came up somewhat hard. 

Cris. O ! I shall cast up my — spurious — 

Hor. Good. Again. 

Cris. Chilblain'' d — O — O — clumsie — 

Hor. That clu?nsie stuck terribly. 

Gal. Who would have thought there should have been such a 

deal of filth in a poet ? 

Cces. Now all 's come out, I trow. What a tumult he had in 

his belly ! 
Hor. No, there 's the often conscious damp behind still. 
Cris. O — conscious — damp. 
Hor. It is come up, thanks to Apollo and vEsculapius; yet 

there 's another. 
You were best take a pill more. 
Cris. O, no; — — — — — ! 
Hor. Force yourself then a little with your finger. 
Cris. O — O — prorumpt. 
Tib. Prorutnpt I What a noise it made ! 

As if his spirit would have prorumpt with it. 
Cris. O — O — O ! 

Virg. Help him, it sticks strangely, whatever it is. 
Cris. O — clutcht. 



Ben yonsons Testimony. 97 

CcBs. Clutch t ! it is well that's come up ; it had but a nar- 
row passage. 

Cris. O ! 

Virg. Again ! hold him ! hold his head there. 

Cris. O — obstupefact. 

Tib. Nay, that are all we, I assure you. 

Hor. How do you feel yourself ? 

Cris. Pretty and well, 1 thank you. 

Virg. These pills can but restore him for a time. 
Not cure him quite of such a malady. 
'T is necessary, therefore, he observe 
A strict and wholesome diet. Look you take 
Each morning of old Cato's principles 
A good draught next your heart. That walk upon, 
Till it be well digested ; then come home, 
And taste a piece of Terence ; but, at any hand. 
Shun Plautus and Ennius ; they are meats 
Too harsh for a weak stomach. Use to read 
(But not without a tutor) the best Greeks. 

Now dissolve the court. 
Cas. It is the bane and torment of our ears, 

To hear the discords of those jangling rhymers, 
That with their bad and scandalous practices 
Bring all true arts and learning in contempt. 

Blush, folly, blush ; here 's none that fears 

The wagging of an ass's ears. 

Detraction is but baseness' varlet, 

And apes are apes, though clothed in scarlet." 

It is admitted that Jonson intended this satire for 
the benefit of more than one of his contemporaries, 
— for Marston, among others; but that Shakspere 
was his principal target is fully apparent: — 

1. At the opening of the above scene the name of 
Crispinus is given with a hyphen ; thus, Cri-spinus. 

2. Crispinus was also an actor, for Caesar expressly 

7 



98 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

states that, " though clothed in scarlet," he will still 
be an ape.^ A scarlet dress was the badge of the 
profession. When Shakspere's company marched 
through the streets of London on the day of the 
king's coronation, each member of it was presented 
with four and one-half yards of red or scarlet cloth. 
No other person whom Jonson could have had in 
mind ever trod the boards. Marston and Dekker 
were playwrights only. 

3. Crispinus had no classical education, for he is 
advised, when studying the Greek dramatists, to 
employ a tutor. This could not have been said of 
Marston, who was an accomplished Oxford scholar. 

4. The father of Crispinus was a " man of wor- 
ship." John Shakspere, father of William, had been 
bailiff of Stratford, and entitled to the designation of 
" worship." 

5. Crispinus possessed a coat-of-arms. Shakspere 
had applied for one, and on that account was called 
" gentle." 

" The very character of the arms attributed to Crispinus is 
exactly that of Shakspere's fraudulent coat; it belongs to the 
canting department of heraldry, and is merely an emblematic 
pun upon the name. The shake of Shakspere is represented by 
the crest, — a falcon flapping his wings; the speare, by a spear 
in a bend upon the shield. Such was Crispinus' canting coat : 
the cry^ by a face crying ; the spinas, by three thorns. There 
is no suggestion that Marston's arms warranted any such 
satire. 

" It was not against the misfortune of hereditary gentility 

1 The word " Ape " seems to have been Jonson's favorite appel- 
lation for Shakspere previously to 1620. It is the exact word to 
express his contempt for a great literary imposture. 



Ben Jonsons Testimony. 99 

that Jonson directed his satire; it was against the folly, as he 
considered it, of a peasant seeking to improve his social status 
by obtaining a grant of arms." — R. Simpson, No. Brit. Review, 
July, 1870, p. 413- 

6. The charge of using outlandish terms is appli- 
cable to " Shake-speare " as well as to Marston. The 
first word to " come up " in the presence of the Court 
was retrograde, " recently used," says Mr. Morley 
(English Writers, Vol. X. p. 392), " by Shakespeare 
in Hamlet " : — 

" It is most retrograde ^ to our desire." — I. 2. 

Several others in the list, including the one that 
Caesar thought so fortunately delivered, were also 
taken from " Shake-speare." Mr. Donnelly gives the 
following kindred specimens found in the plays : — 

Rubrous Evitate 

Deracinate Imbost 

Cantelous Disnatured 

Recordation Inaidable 

Enwheel Oppugnancy 

Armipotent Enskied 

Unsuppressive Legerity ^ 

7. This was also the opinion of contemporaries, 
for the anonymous author of ' The Return from Par- 
nassus,' published in 1606, refers to this caricature in 
' The Poetaster ' as follows : — 

^ Bacon used the word once in his prose works before it was cari- 
catured by Jonson. He called special attention to it as, on the occa- 
sion, very apt and expressive. 

^ The Great Cryptogratn, p. 24. 



lOO Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

" Oh, that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, for he brought up 
Horace giving the poets a pill ; but our fellow Shakespeare 
hath given him a purge that made him beray his credit." ^ 

'Bartholomew Fair' was acted in 1614; in the 
induction to that play we find the following : — 

" If there never be a servant-monster in a fair, who can help 
it, he says, nor a nest of antiques ! he is loth to make nature 
afraid in his plays, like those that beget tales, tempests, 

^ Mr. Nicholson, the latest editor of Jonson's works (II. 262) thinks 
that " Shake-speare " must have ridiculed Jonson " in a piece that has 
not come down to us " (at some time previously to the appearance of 
the Poetaster), " as a precedent for Horace's pills." 

" Of the twenty-nine inculpated words, several either had been, or 
were immediately afterwards, used by Shakespeare, — such as retro- 
grade, reciprocal, defunct, puff, damp, clutched. 

" In the ' Troilus and Cressida ' it is quite clear that Shakespeare, 
as if in express defiance of Jonson's criticism, laid himself out to 
adopt strange-sounding words into his language." — R. Simpson, No. 
Brit. Reviezu, July, 1870. 

Jacob Feis, author of ' Shakspere and Montaigne,' presents an 
additional reason for believing that Crispinus is a caricature of Shak- 
spere. He says : — 

" The full name given by Jonson to Crispinus is Rufus Laberius 
Crispinus. John Marston already, in 1598, designates Shakspere by 
the nickname of 'Rufus.' Every one can convince himself of this 
by reading first Shakspere's ' Venus and Adonis ' and, immediately 
afterwards, John Marston's ' Pigmalion's Image.' 

" The name of Rufus has two peculiarities which may have induced 
Marston to confer it upon Shakspere. First of all, like the English 
king of that name, Shakspere's pre-name was William. Secondly, 
the best-preserved portrait of Shakspere shows him with hair verging 
upon a reddish hue. 

" Laberius (from labare, to shake ; hence Shak-erius, a name similar 
to Greene's Shake-scene) is clearly an indication of the Poet's [jzV] 
family name." — p. 160. 

Herr Feis also calls attention to the fact that Horace in the ' Poet- 
aster' asks if the father of Crispinus be not dead; John Shakspere 
had just died in Stratford. 



Ben yonson s Testimony. loi 

and such like drolleries, to mix his head with other men's 
heels." — Be7i Jonson. 

In explanation of the above we quote as follows : 

"The mention of 'servant-monster' recalls Caliban in Shake- 
speare's ' Tempest,' and the expression ' to mix his head with 
other men's heels,' a scene in the play where Trinculo takes 
refuge from the storm under Caliban's gabardine. There can be 
no doubt that Jonson was alluding to the 'Tempest.'" — Z?r. 
Ingleby^s Century of Praise^ p. 83. 

" Our author [Jonson] is still venting his sneers at Shake- 
speare." — Whallefs Editioti of J(fiison''s Works, III. 282. 

In 1619, Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden 
that " Shakespeare wanted art, and sometimes sense." 

Now let us see what happened in 1620 or there- 
abouts for after that date we find in Jonson nothing 
but the most extravagant eulogy of " Shake-speare." 
A sudden and complete change of heart must be 
accounted for. We quote the following from Jonson's 
verses prefixed to the first "Shake-speare" folio of 
1623: — 

" Soul of the age ! 
The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our stage ! 
My Shakespeare, rise ; I will not lodge thee by 
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie 
A little further, to make thee a room ; 
Thou art a monument, without a tomb, 
And art alive still, while thy book doth live, 
And we have wits to read, and praise to give. 

And tell, how far thou didst our Lily outshine, 
Or sporting Kid, or Marlowe's mighty line. 



102 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,i 

From thence to honor thee, I would not seek 

For names ; but call forth thundering ^schylus, 

Euripides, and Sophocles to us, 

Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, 

To life again, to hear thy buskin tread, 

And shake a stage ; ^ or, when thy socks were on, 

Leave thee alone, for the comparison 

Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome 

Sent forth." 

During the latter part of his Hfe, Jonson was in the 
habit of jotting clown from time to time certain 
memorabilia, or disjointed remarks on persons and 
things which he deemed worthy of record, and which 
were pubHshed after his death under the title of 
' Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Mat- 
ter.' The collection contains (not without some ad- 
mixture of facetiousness, however) an amiable sketch 
of the author of the plays. It is as follows : — 

1 This is evidently a humorous remark, called out by Bacon's well- 
known want of correctness in the use of these foreign tongues. Bacon 
was fully aware of his deficiency in this respect, for he once felici- 
tated himself in a private letter upon the increased fluency with 
which he was writing Latin. The Promus notes in Latin are full of 
inaccuracies. 

A contemporary thus criticises Bacon's use of Latin : " I come even 
now from reading a short discourse of Queen Elizabeth's life, writ- 
ten in Latin by Sir Francis Bacon. ... I do not warrant that his 
Latin will abide test or touch." — John Chamberlain, Dec. i6, 1608. 

2 Another example of the vein of humor running through this 
whole performance. Greene's characterization of the reputed dram- 
atist in 1592 as a " Shake-scene " is undoubtedly referred to. 

Further on, Jonson again parodies the name, saying, — 

" He seems to shake a lance, 
As brandish't at the eyes of ignorance." 



Ben Jonsons Testimo7iy. 103 

" I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor 
to Shakespeare that in his writing, whatsoever he penn'd, he 
never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, ' would he had 
blotted a thousand ! ' — which they thought a malevolent speech. 
I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance who choose 
that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most 
faulted ; and to justify mine own candor ; — for I loved the 
man, and do honor his memory, on this side idolatry, as much 
as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free 
nature ; had an excellent fantasy ; brave notions and gentle ex- 
pressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes 
it was necessary he should be stopped ; — sufflatninandus erai, 
as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; 
would the rule of it had been so too ! Many times he fell into 
those things could not escape laughter; as when he said in the 
person of Caesar, one speaking to him, — ' Ccesar, thou dost me 
wrong ; ' he replied, — ' Caesar did never wrong but with just 
cause,' and such like ; which were ridiculous. But he re- 
deemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him 
to be praised than to be pardoned." 

Considering the absurdity of the above criticism 
on the play of ' JuHus Caesar ' (explainable on the 
supposition that Shakspere the actor had made such 
a mistake in a recitation on the stage), we find our- 
selves entirely free to question the identity of this 
famous portraiture. It seems to carry with it a 
double implication, as though the artist had painted 
a picture with the eyes and nose of one man, and the 
mouth and chin of another. In these days of com- 
posite photography he would have focused the two 
heads together for a common likeness. As it is, we 
are sure only that all ill-nature toward Shakspere was 
now gone from the rival who had so often and, as the 
critics say, so malignantly persecuted him in the past 
as an impostor. To be sure, there is in the above 



I04 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

little praise even now for anything in " Shake- 
speare" but his personal qualities; but those qualities 
receive at last from Jonson unstinted praise. The 
dramas are not changed, but a lovable author, instead 
of a " Poet- Ape," now stands behind them. 

The following is a summary of Jonson's utterances 
concerning " Shake-speare " : — 

1598. He degrades the stage. He is ignorant of the ordinary 

rules of dramatization. 
1601. He barbarizes the English language, and brings all arts 

and learning into contempt. He wags an ass's ears. 

He is an ape. 
1614. His tales are but drolleries. He mixes his head with 

other men's heels. 
1616. He is a poet-ape, an upstart, a hypocrite, and a thief. 

His works are but the frippery of wit. 
i6[9. He wanted art and sometimes sense. 

1623. The soul of the age ; the greatest writer of ancient or 

modern times. 
1637. I loved him this side idolatry as much as any. 

The key to this paradox lies, without doubt, in 
the sudden intimacy which Jonson contracted with 
Francis Bacon in or about the year 1620. We hear 
of it for the first time after Jonson's long walk from 
London to Edinburgh in 1618-19, for we know that 
Bacon bantered him on the subject, protesting that 
poetry should go on no other feet than dactyls and 
spondees. Jonson soon afterwards took up his resi- 
dence with Bacon at Gorhambury, and became one of 
the " good pens " which Bacon employed to translate 
the 'Advancement' and other philosophical works 
into Latin ; and when the latter celebrated his sixtieth 



Ben yonsons Testimony. 105 

birthday in January, 1621, Jonson was an honored 
guest, making the occasion memorable by an epi- 
gram in which he invested the ancestral pile on the 
Thames with some great mystery, and apostrophized 
its owner in the following beautiful lines : — 

" England's high Chancellor ! the destined heir, 
In his soft cradle, to his father's chair ; 
Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full 
Out of their choicest and their whitest wool." 

This conclusion becomes practically certain when 
we note the following : — 

1. In the preface to the Shake-speare folio Jonson 
pronounced the works of Shake-speare superior to 

" All that insolent Greece or haughty Rome sent forth." 

A few years afterwards, in his ' Discoveries,' he 
declared that Bacon's works were to be — 

" preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome." 

Evidently, in genius and therefore in personality, 
the two, as Jonson now viewed them, had become one. 

2. In the ' Discoveries ' Jonson made a list of the 
great men he had „known, thirteen in number. In 
this list Shakspere's name is not mentioned, but 
Bacon's is put at the head. Bacon is called the 
" mark and acme of our language." This is indubi- 
table proof that Jonson was not sincere in his contri- 
bution to the preliminary matter of the Shake-speare 
folio. Those famous verses were exoteric only. 

3. Jonson also asserted that Bacon had " filled all 
numbers." 




io6 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

" He [Bacon] hath filled up all numbers, and performed that 
in our tongue which may be compared or preferred to insolent 
Greece or haughty Rome ; ... so that he may be named the 
mark and acme of our language." — Discoveries. 

To "fill all numbers" is a Latinism, signifying /c» 
have every perfectioti. In early times, however, it was 
used as an expression for poetry, as the following 
examples will show : — 

" These numbers will I tear, and write in prose." 

Love's Labor V Lost, IV. 3. 

" And now my gracious numbers are decayed, 
And my sick muse doth give another place." 

Shakespeare Sonnet^ LXXIX. 

" My early numbers flow." 

Milton. 

" I lisped in numbers, and the numbers came." 

Pope. 

Finally, it is possible, perhaps even probable, that 
Jonson referred to the secret, immediately after it 
was revealed to him, in the epigram which he read 
on the occasion of Bacon's sixtieth birthday in 162 1. 
We have already quoted a part of this production; 
we now present it entire : — 

" Hail, happy genius of this ancient pile ! 
How comes it all things so about thee smile? 
The fire, the wine, the men ! and in the midst 
Thou stand'st as if some mystery thou didst! 
Pardon, I read it in thy face, the day 
For whose returns, and many, all these pray ; 
And so do I. This is the sixtieth year 
Since Bacon and thy lord was born, and here. 
Son to the grave wise keeper of the seal, 
Fame and foundation of the English weal. 



Ben yonso7is Testimony. 107 

What then his father was, that since is he, 
Now with a title more to the degree. 
England's high chancellor : the destined heir 
In his soft cradle to his father's chair ; 
Whose even thread the fates spin round and full, 
Out of their choicest and their whitest wool. 
'T is a brave cause of joy, let it be known, 
For 't were a narrow gladness, kept thine own. 
Give me a deep-crown'd bowl, that I may sing 
In raising him the wisdom of my king." 

The obvious or superficial explanation of these 
lines is this : Jonson, entering the time-honored man- 
sion, sees on all sides around him unusual signs of 
rejoicing, which, for the moment, he pretends he 
does not understand. He invokes the presiding 
genius of the place, and demands to know the cause 
of so much gayety. Then he begs pardon, for he 
reads the answer in the spirit's face ; — it is the birth- 
day of its lord, over whom Jonson at once pro- 
nounces a splendid panegyric. Finally, he declares 
that this is a secret which the spirit of no private 
mansion should keep to itself, and offers, if a well- 
filled bowl be given to him, to drink a bumper to the 
king in tribute to it. 

It will be noticed, we think, that this paraphrase, 
while entirely faithful to the original, fails to do jus- 
tice to the nature or magnitude of the mystery sug- 
gested by the poet. The " genius " of the place was 
making no effort to keep the birthday a secret; on 
the contrary, it was commemorating the event in a 
manner to give it the widest publicity. The real 
" cause of joy," which Jonson wanted divulged, was 
one that required some bravery, as he said, to di- 



io8 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

vulge it, but one, nevertheless, that would bring to his 
friend, in spite of some fear to the contrary, only 
honor and " gladness." That secret, it may safely 
be assumed, was the authorship of the Shake-speare 
plays. 

" "'TIS a brave cajise of joy ^ let it be known, 
For Uwere a narrcw gladness, kept thine own.''^ 

" The statements of Ben Jonson [in the latter part of his life] 
are quite compatible with his being in the secret." — Chambers'' 
Edinburg Journal, Aug. 7, 1852. 

XII. With the exception of the isolated play of 
' King- John,' the series depicting English history ex- 
tends from the deposition of Richard II. to the birth 
of Elizabeth, in the reign of Henry VIII. In this 
long chain there is one break, and one only, — the 
important period of Henry VII., when the foundations 
of social order, as we now have them, were firmly 
laid. The omission, on any but the Baconian theory 
of authorship, is inexplicable, for the dramatist could 
hardly have failed, except for personal considerations, 
to drop his plummet into the richest and most in- 
structive experiences of political life that lay in his 
path. The truth is. Bacon wrote a history of the 
missing reign in prose which exactly fills the gap ; 
the one is tongued and grooved, as it were, into the 
other.i 

1 This point was first brought out by Mr. William H. Smith, of 
England, who enjoys the distinction, with Miss Delia Bacon and 
Mrs. Constance M. Pott, of having been an independent discoverer 
of the world's greatest dramatist. Miss Bacon made her public an- 
nouncement in Putnam's Monthly (N. Y.), January, 1856; Mr. Smith, 
in an open letter to Lord Ellesmere, President of the Shake- 



Reign of Henjy VI L 109 

It is noteworthy, also, that the events of this reign 
are admirably suited for dramatic representation. 
Indeed, we know of no subject for psychological 
study more attractive to such a pen as Shakespeare's 
than the king's hesitancy in crowning his royal con- 
sort. The marriage with Elizabeth was a political 
one ; it united the Roses, but not the hearts of hus- 
band and wife. For several months the bridegroom 
was a curious prey to the conflicting sentiments of 
ambition and fear. It was in this reign, also, that 
Simnel and Perkin Warbeck headed their ridiculous 
insurrections, — the former personating an imprisoned 
earl, and the latter one of the princes murdered by 
Richard in the Tower, and both ending their respec- 
tive careers on the gibbet and doing scullery work 
in the king's kitchen. To our minds, incidents such 
as these afford admirable materials for the stage, and 
may well require us to explain why they were ignored 
by " Shake-speare." 

XIII. ' Troilus and Cressida ' was published for the 
first time, without reservation, in 1609. A writer in 

speare Society of London, in September following. Like Adams and 
Le Verrier in the case of the planet Neptune, neither knew at the time 
of the work, or even of the existence, of the other. 

Mr. Smith is still living (1896), full of years and (Baconian) honor. 
He had passed the prime of life when he rocked the cradle of this 
enfant terrible. 

The following notice of his book is interesting: — 

" Mr. Smith denies the appropriation of Miss Bacon's theory, and 
assures us that he never heard the name of Miss Bacon until Septem- 
ber, 1856. The question may be of slight importance ivhich of two 
given individuals first conceived a crazy notion." — The {London) 
At/iencTiitn, 1857. 

Per contra, Ralph Waldo Emerson declared that Miss Bacon " has 
opened the subject so that it can never again be closed." 



no Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

the preface claims special credit for the work on the 
ground that it had not been produced on the public 
stage, or (to use his own words) " never clapper- 
clawed with the palms of the vulgar," or " sullied 
with the smoky breath of the multitude." Then he 
thanks fortune that a copy of the play had escaped 
from " grand possessors." 

Three inferences seem to be justifiable, viz. : 

1. The author was indifferent to pecuniary reward; ^ 

2. He was not a member of the theatrical profes- 
sion; 3. He was of high social rank, 

" We learn that the copy had an escape from some powerful 
possessors. It appears that these possessors were powerful 
enough to prevent a single copy of any one of the plays which 
Shakespeare produced in his noon of fame (with the exception 
of ' Troilus and Cressida ' and ' Lear ') being printed till after 
his death; and between his death in 1616, and the pubhcation 
of the folio in 1623, they continued the exercise of their power, 
so as to allow only one edition of one play ('Othello') which 
had not been printed in his lifetime to appear." — Charles 
Knight. 

XIV. The plays, as they came out, were first pub- 
lished anonymously. Several of them had been in 
the hands of the public for years before the name of 
" Shake-speare " appeared on a title-page. Other 
plays, not belonging to the Shakespearean canon, 
and most of them of very inferior merit, were also 
given to the world as " Shake-speare's." We have 
fourteen of these heterogeneous compositions attrib- 

^ At this time Bacon was in easy circumstances. By the death of 
his brother he had come into possession of Gorhambury and other 
remnants of the family estate ; and he was in receipt of a salary from 
the government. 



First Folio. 1 1 1 

uted to the same "divine" authorship, — geese and 
eagles coming helter-skelter from a single nest, — at 
a time when Coke, the law officer of the government, 
declared poetasters and playwrights to be " fit sub- 
jects for the grand jury as vagrants." It was enough 
for the impecunious authors of these plays that 
Shakspere, manager and perhaps part proprietor of 
two theatres, and amassing a large fortune in the 
business, was willing, apparently, to adopt every 
child of the drama laid on his door-step. This ac- 
counts for Greene's characterization of him as " an 
upstart crow beautified with our feathers." It is evi- 
dent, nevertheless, that " Shake-speare " was a favor- 
ite nom de plume with the dramatic wits of that 
time.^ 

XV. The first complete edition of the plays, sub- 
stantially as we now have them, was the famous folio 
of 1623. Its titles number thirty-six, and for our 
present purpose may be classified as follows : Plays, 
previously printed in various quartos at dates rang- 
ing from 1597 to 1622, eighteen; those not previ- 
ously printed, but known to have been produced on 
the stage, twelve ; lastly, those, so far as we know, 
entirely new, six. Of the plays in the first class it is 
found, by comparison, that several had been rewrit- 
ten, and in some cases greatly enlarged during the 

1 The following were published in Shakspere's lifetime, and sub- 
sequently incorporated in the third " Shake-speare " folio : — 
The London Prodigal, "by William Shakespeare." 
Sir John Oldcastle, " " " 

A Yorkshire Tragedy, " " " 

Thomas Lord Cromwell, "by W. S." 
The Puritan, " " 

Locrine, " " 



112 Bac^n vs. Shakspere. 

fourteen years or more subsequent to their first ap- 
pearance. The same is probably true of some in the 
second class, though on this point we are, naturally 
enough, without means of verification. In any event, 
however, it is certain that the compositions which 
were new, together with those which, by changes and 
accretions, had been made new, constitute no incon- 
siderable part of the book. Who did this work? 
Who prepared it for the press? Shakspere died in 
1616, seven years before the folio was published, and 
for several years before his death he had lived in 
Stratford, without facilities for such a task, and in a 
social atmosphere in the highest degree unfavorable 
for it. On the other hand, Bacon retired to private 
life in 1 62 1, at the age of sixty, in the plenitude of 
his powers, and under circumstances that would nat- 
urally cause him to roll this apple of discord, refined 
into the purest gold, down the ages.^ 

1 The most noteworthy examples under this head are the Second 
and Third Parts of Henry VI. These plays were first published in 
1594 and 1595, under the titles, respectively, of the First Part of the 
Contention between the Two Famous Houses, York and Lancaster, 
and the True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York. They were re- 
published in 1600, and again in 1619 (three years after Shakspere's 
death), under the same general title, and in other respects, also, sub- 
stantially as first printed. In the folio of 1623, however, they appear 
under new titles, and largely rewritten. The Second Part (for in- 
stance), which had originally contained three thousand and fifty-seven 
lines, suddenly comes out with fifteen hundred and seventy-eight lines 
entirely new, and with about one-half of the remainder altered or 
expanded from passages in the old. 

'The Merry Wives of Windsor' was first published in quarto in 
1602, and again, as a mere reprint, in 1619. In the folio it is nearly 
twice as long as in the quartos, — the latter being, as Richard Grant 
White says, "simply a sketch of the perfected play." 

As printed in Shakspere's lifetime, ' Troilus and Cressida' had no 



First Folio. 1 1 3 

XVI. Other mysteries cluster around this edition. 
The ostensible editors were two play-actors, named 
Heminge and Condell, formerly connected with the 
company of which Shakespeare was a member. 
Heminge appears, also, to have been a grocer. In 
the dedication of the book they characterize the 
plays with singular, not to say suspicious, infelicity 
as " trifles." They astonish us still more by the use 
they make of Pliny's epistle to Vespasian, prefixed 
to his 'Natural History.' Not only are the thoughts 
of the Latin author most happily introduced, but 
they are amplified and fitted to the purpose with 
consummate literary skill. 

Then follows a pithy address to the public, in 
which the editors seek to justify their revolutionary 
work, undertaken so long after Shakespeare's death, 
on the ground that all previous publications of the 
plays had been made from stolen copies, and were, 
therefore, inaccurate as well as fraudulent. A com- 
parison of the two sets, however, discloses a state of 
things quite inconsistent with the sincerity of Messrs. 
Heminge and Condell. Some of the finest passages 
given in the Quartos are omitted in the Folio, — one 
particularly in ' Hamlet,' in which the genius of the 
author, as Swinburne asserts, " soars up to the very 
highest of its height, and strikes down to the very 
deepest of its depth." ^ In 'King Lear,' also, but for 

prologue. It appeared with one in 1623, — a circumstance so ex- 
traordinary that commentators are vainly inquiring who wrote these 
introductory verses. 

' Othello ' was first given to the world in quarto form in 1622, six 
years after Shakspere's death; and yet it received numerous and im- 
portant emendations for the folio one year later. 

1 " Magnificent as is that monologue on suicide and doubt, it is ac- 



114 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

the " stolen copies," the following description of Cor- 
delia's sorrow, together with the whole scene con- 
taining it, would have been lost forever : — 

" You have seen 
Sunshine and rain at once; her smiles and tears 
Were like a better May ; those happy smilets, 
That play'd on her ripe lip, seemed not to know 
What guests were in her eyes ; which parted thence, 
As pearls from diamonds dropp'd." 

And who is not shocked at the statement in the 
folio that Desdemona, at one of her first interviews 
with the swarthy Moor, received the story of his life 
" with a world," not of sighs, but " of kisses ! " 

" It can be proved to demonstration that several of the plays 
in the folio were printed from earlier quarto editions, and that 
in other cases the quarto is more correctly printed, or from a 
better MS., than the folio text, and therefore of higher au- 
thority. For example, in 'Midsummer Night's Dream* and 
in ' Richard III.' the reading of the quartos is almost always 
preferable to that of the folio ; and ' Hamlet,' where it differs 
from the quartos, differs for the worse in forty-seven places, 
while it differs for the better in twenty at most." — The Cam- 
bridge Shakespeare, Preface, p. xxvi. 

The truth probably is that Heminge and Condell 
were merely nominal editors ; that they loaned their 
names to some person or persons of high literary 
attainments, who wrote the introductory matter for 
them ; and that the introductory matter itself, with 
its absurd misrepresentation of facts, was intended to 

tually eclipsed and distanced, af- once on philosophical and on poetic 
grounds, by the later soliloquy on reason and resolution." — Study of 
Shakespeare, p. i66. 



First Folio. iiS 

mystify and cajole the public. Of the body of the 
work there was evidently no intelligent supervision.^ 

1 The book was entered for license at Stationers' Hall, Nov. 9, 
1623 ; when it was printed is not known. Halliwell-Phillipps thought 
that a large part of it must have gone to press before August 6 of 
that year, the date of Mrs. Shakspere's death. Bacon was banished 
from the court and from London in 1621, and mayJnot have had the 
opportunity, if he had wished, to supervise the publication. We 
know, however, that he was indifferent to the details of such an un- 
dertaking. He permitted the third edition of his Essays, printed in 
1625, to go out so disfigured with excess of punctuation that it is to- 
day a typographical curiosity. It is literally cut into inch pieces with 
commas. 

The printing of the " Shake-speare " folio, of one thousand pages, 
was undoubtedly a great achievement for those days. It was sufiicient 
to tax the resources of any establishment then existing, or perhaps of 
several establishments combined. The book was probably set up 
and printed one page at a time, — a method generally pursued in the 
early stages of the art, and one that prevailed when the second (1632) 
and third (1664) editions of the folio went to press, causing that curi- 
ous reproduction of page work about which so many conjectures have 
recently been made. As a rule, compositors were assigned each a 
page at a time for copy, evidently without much allowance, in the 
case of reprints, for changes introduced into the preceding parts of 
the book. The beginnings of the pages of the three editions of the 
" Shake-speare " folio would therefore be identical. Other irregu- 
larities may also be accounted for in this simple way. For instance, 
the typos were too independent of one another for any rigid system 
of paging. The first edition of the 'Paradise Lost' (1667) ^a^ not 
paged at all. Bacon's ' Advancement of Learning ' had the leaves, 
not the pages, numbered. Even then the pagination was exceedingly 
irregular, as the following consecutive examples from it, beginning 
with page 69. will show, — 69, 70, 70, 71, 70, 72, 74, 73. 74, 75, 69, 77, 
7S. 79, 80, 77, 74, 69, 69, 82, 87, 79. 89. The number on the last page 
is incorrect. (See Shakespeariaiui, III. 334.) 

The ' Advancement of Learning ' affords another proof of Bacon's 
inattention to such matters. In the first edition of that work occurred 
the word diisinesse, which, though evidently a misprint, the author did 
not correct. He left it to conjecture, under which a subsequent editor 
let it pass as business. It was not until Mr. Spedding, two hundred 
and fifty j-ears afterwards, compared the original with the Latin ver- 
sion that the word was printed correctly, — dizziness. 



ii6 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

XVII. It would be well-nigh miraculous if in all 
these works, dealing as they do with so naany kinds 
and degrees of human vicissitude, we could not find 
somewhere in them a trace of the, author's own per- 
sonality. Indeed, editors have been constantly 
searching for it, even at the risk of converting ex- 
egesis into biography. Two of them, for instance, 
have surmised that the dramatist was educated at 
Oxford or Cambridge, and afterward trained to law 
at one of the Inns of Court, because Justice Shallow 
recommended such a course of study (actually pur- 
sued by Bacon) in ' Henry IV.' It is not surprising, 
therefore, that on the supposition of Bacon's author- 
ship we should discover in two of the plays unmis- 
takable marks of a great crisis in his life. These two 
are ' Timon of Athens ' and ' Henry VIII.' They 
seem to be filled, like ocean shells, with the dash and 
roar of waves. They were both printed for the first 
time in the folio of 1623, — the ' Timon ' having never 
been heard of before, and the other also, almost as 
certainly, a new production. An older play, enti- 
tled 'All is True,' based on unknown incidents of the 
same reign, was on the boards of the Globe Theatre 
on the night of the fire in June, 1613 ; but w^e have 
no reason to believe that it was the magnificent 
Shakespearean drama of ' Henry VIII.,' at least in 
the form in which it was printed in the folio ten 
years later.^ 

1 " It is in the folio of 1623 that we hear, for the first time, of the 
' Taming of the Shrew,' ' Henry VIII.,' ' All 's Well that Ends Well,' 
' Julius Caesar,' ' Timon of Athens,' and ' Coriolanus.' " — Halliwell- 
P/nllipps' 02itlines. 

" ' Henry VIII.,' as we have it, is not the play that was in action 
at the Globe when that theatre was burned on Tuesday, 29th June, 
1613." — Fleay's Life of Shakespeare, p. 250. 



7 



Bacon s Downfall. 117 

The catastrophe that overwhelmed Bacon in 1621 
was one of the saddest in the annals of our race. 
No wonder Timon hurls invectives at his false 
friends, and Cardinal Wolsey utters his grand but 
pathetic lament over fallen greatness ! Such storms 
of feeling, sweeping over a human soul, must have 
gathered their force among the mountains and val- 
leys of a mighty personal experience. 

" ' Timon of Athens ' forms the beautiful close of Shake- 
speare's poetical career. It reflects more clearly than any- 
other piece the poet's consciousness of the nothingness of 
human life. No one could have painted misanthropy with 
such truth and force without having experienced its bitter 
agony." — Ulrici's Dramatic Arl of Shakespeare, p. 244. 



IV. 

OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 

As counsel for defendant may be disposed at this 
point to demur to the evidence, and thus take the 
case from the jury, we feel obliged to file a statement 
of facts and objections on the other side, arranged 
seriatim in the inverse order of their importance, as 
follows : — 

/. Froiti 1598, when the pi{blication of the plays ceased 
to he anonymous, to 1848, when Joseph C. Hart, an Amer- 
ican, publicly initiated the doubt concerning their authorship ^ 
{a period of two hundred and fifty years') , the whole world, 
nem. con., attributed them to William Shakspere. 

The plays came into existence in obscurity. No 
person appears to have taken the slightest interest in 
their putative author. His very insignificance saved 
him from prosecution when the play of ' Richard II.' 

1 Disraeli (Earl Beaconsfield) raised the question, it appears, in 
his novel, ' Venetia,' published in 1837. One of his characters, under- 
stood to personate Byron, is made to utter the following : — 

" And who is Shakespeare ? We know of him as much as we do 
of Homer. Did he write half the plays attributed to him ? Did he 
write even a single whole play ? I doubt it." 

" Lord Byron is reported to have expressed similar sentiments, in 
pfopria persona, several years earlier." — Medwiti's Conversations with 
Lord Byron, 1S21. 

Our attention was called to these interesting facts by Mr. W. H. 
Wyman, of Omaha, Nebraska. 



9 Opinions of Critics. 119 

was used by Essex for treasonable ends ; and the 
same indifference to him continued for a long time 
after his death. Indeed, the critics were as blind to 
the character of these great works as they were, in 
the early part of the present century, to the merits of 
Wordsworth, whom the most eminent of them at one 
time flatly denounced as little better than an idiot. 
Wordsworth now ranks as third in the list of British 
poets.^ 

Dr. Appleton Morgan, in his brilliant contribution 
to the literature of this subject, reminds us of the 
general contempt in which the plays were buried at 
the time of Cromwell, and, to a certain extent, for 
more than a hundred years after the Restoration. In 
1661 Evelyn reports that they " begin to disgust this 
refined age." Pepys preferred Hudibras to " Shake- 
speare," pronouncing * Midsummer Night's Dream ' 
the " most insipid, ridiculous play," and ' Romeo and 
Juliet' the "worst," he had ever seen. Rethought 
very well for a time of ' Othello,' but an unkind 
providence leading him to read the ' Adventures of 
Five Hours,' he immediately regarded 'Othello' as 
" mean," and ' Twelfth Night ' (the perfection of 
English comedy) as "silly." In i68r Tate, a poet 
who afterward wore the laurel, could find no epithet 
sufficiently opprobrious to express his aversion for 
* King Lear,' and so he called it simply a "thing." 
In Hume's condemnation, " Shake-speare " and Bacon 

1 The next in rank had the same experience. The great critic, 
" Christopher North," did not hesitate to call Tennyson, on the ap- 
pearance of the first book of his poems in 1830, "an owl," and to say, 
" All that he wants is to be shot, stuffed, and stuck in a glass case, to 
be made immortal in a museum." 



120 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

were yoked together as wanting in simplicity and 
purity of diction, " with defective taste and elegance." 
Addison styled the plays " very faulty," and Johnson 
asserted, with his usual emphasis, that " Shake- 
speare " never wrote six consecutive lines " without 
a fault." " Perhaps you might find seven," he added, 
with grim humor, " but that does not refute my gen- 
eral assertion." He further declared that " Shake- 
speare " had not, perhaps, produced " one play which, 
if it were now exhibited as the work of a contem- 
porary writer, would be heard to the conclusion." 
Margaret Cavendish, a voluminous author of the 
seventeenth century, took her cue from no less a 
person than Homer, who praised the valor of the 
Trojans in order to make the victory of the Greeks 
more glorious; she praised the wit of the plays, but 
ended in a fine gush of conjugal loyalty by claiming 
that her own husband was, in that respect at least, 
superior to the creator of Falstaff. Dryden, though 
not without lucid intervals of high appreciation, still 
regarded " Shake-speare " and Fletcher as " below 
the dullest writers of our own or any precedent age," 
full of " solecisms of speech," " flaws of sense," and 
" ridiculous and incoherent stories meanly written." 
He disapproved of " Shake-speare's " style, describing 
it as " pestered with figurative expressions," " affected," 
and " obscure." 

In 1680 Otway stole the character of the nurse and 
all the love-scenes in ' Romeo and Juliet,' and pub- 
lished them as his own, evidently under no fear of 
detection. 

The author of the ' Tatler,' one hundred years after 
" Shake-speare's " time, told the story of the ' Taming 



• opinions of Critics. 121 

of the Shrew ' as though it were new to his readers ; 
and having occasion to quote a few hnes from ' Mac- 
beth,' was content to receive them from a new ver- 
sion of that drama, in which, as Chalmers says, 
" almost every original beauty is either awkwardly 
disguised or arbitrarily omitted." 

John Dennis, also, thought himself competent to 
rewrite the plays, and he actually put one or two of 
them, "revised and improved," on the boards in 
London, apparently without the least suspicion, on 
the part of the audiences that witnessed them, of any 
sacrilege. It was George Granville, however, who 
gave to " Shake-speare " the unkindest cut of all, 
for, having rewritten the ' Merchant of Venice,' he 
brought " Shake-speare's " ghost upon the stage, and 
made him say, — 

" The first rude sketches [my own] pencil drew, 
But all the shining master-strokes are new. 
This play, ye critics, shall your fury stand, 
Adorn'd and rescu'd by a faultless hand." 

In this respect Davenant was the most persistent 

offender, for he remodelled 'Macbeth,' 'Measure for 

Measure,' ' Much Ado about Nothing,' and also (in 

conjunction with Dryden) 'The Tempest.' 

In this latter play the treatment of Miranda, who 

had never seen a man, and of Hippolyto, a new 

character who had never seen a woman, is, as the 

work of two poets laureate, almost incredible. After 

Davenant's death, Dryden went on with the task of 

demolishing these edifices of marble and rebuilding 

them with brick.^ 

1 " There was probably no man of his day better qualified to write 
sound criticism on the drama, as he knew it, than Dryden. Dryden 



122 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

Thomas Rymer capped the climax. He was His- 
toriographer Royal, and he left behind him works 
that constitute a small library. He said of Desde- 
mona, " There is nothing in her which is not below 
any country kitchen-maid ; no woman bred out of a 
pig-sty could talk so meanly." And of Othello, 
" There is not a monkey but understands nature 
better; not a pug in Barbary that has not a truer 
taste of things." 

Steevens declared that only an act of Parliament 
could make any one read the sonnets. 

On the other side, we have a stock quotation from 
Milton, as follows : — 

" Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 
Warble his native wood-notes wild," — 

requiring a considerable stretch of the imagination 
to apply to the plays. Mr. White calls it " a petty, 
puling dribble of belittling, patronizing praise." ^ 

tells us that he loved Shakespeare, and he says a great deal about 
Shakespeare that shows an appreciation unusual for those times ; but 
he confesses that he admired Ben Jonson more, and thought Beau- 
mont and Fletcher superior for the construction of plots, for natural 
dialogue, for pathos, and for gayety. Even this might pass, but before 
he died, Dryden declared Congreve to be the equal of Shakespeare." 
— Pearson's National Life and Character, p. 306. 

1 " The boundless veneration for Shakespeare in the sonnet is, 
indeed, gone in this passage." — Masson^s Life of Milton. 

" Fond and belittling phrases, as little appropriate as would be 
the patronizing chatter of the planet Venus about the dear, darling 
Sun." — Whipple's Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, p. 37. 

*' No poet was ever less a warbler of 'wood-notes wild.' " — Walter 
Savage Landor. 

" The slur, the gibe, and the covert satire are too obvious." — 
Isaac Disraeli. 

" Milton's panegyric takes no notice at all of the tragedies. This 



Ireland's Forgeries. 12 



i> 



Milton was a Puritan, and probably never soiled his 
fingers with a copy of these wicked works. He had 
some knowledge of their character, to be sure, for he 
accused Charles I, of making them, and " other stuff 
of this sort," his daily reading. Evidently, in Milton's 
opinion, a king who read and admired ' Hamlet ' or 
' Othello ' deserved to lose his head.^ 

With such sentiments as these in vogue regarding 
the plays themselves, how much value should we 
attach to the concurrent belief in the authorship of 
them? Why should men look upward for a star 
when they are content to see it reflected in the dirty 
puddles of the streets? And how natural, under a 
law of moral mechanics, the swinging of public opin- 
ion from blind detraction at one time to equally 
blind idolatry at another ! ^ 

always suggested to me that he had no idea that the author of the 
songs had any hand in them." — Frof. Francis IV. N'ewvian, Letter to 
the Echo, Dec. 31, 1887. 

In his Preface to the ' Samson Agonistes ' (1671), Milton refers to 
yEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides as " the three tragic poets un- 
equalled yet by any." 

^ In his youth Milton wrote a sonnet to Shakespeare, which is one 
of the finest in our language. It was prefixed to the folio edition of 
the plays published in 1632. 

2 As a specimen of the capacity of Shakespearean critics, exhibited 
one hundred years later still, we give the following facts : — 

In 1795 a boy in London, seventeen years old and possessing no 
precocity but that of impudence, composed a play nearly as long as 
' Hamlet,' which he undertook to palm upon the world as " Shake- 
speare's." The effect was electrical. Dr. Warton, Henry James Pye 
(poet laureate), Sir Isaac Heard, Dr. Parr, James Boswell, John 
Pinkerton, George Chalmers, and many others, commentators, stu- 
dents, and lovers of " Shake-speare," received the work with delighted 
credulity. Boswell gave thanks to God that he had lived to see it. 
Sheridan purchased the MS. for the Drury Lane Theatre, where the 



124 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

"In the neighing of a horse, or in the growling of a mastiff, 
there is a meaning, there is as lively expression, and, I may 
say, more humanity, than many times in the tragical flights of 
Shakespeare." — Rytner^ 1693. 

" The true restoration of a single line in Shakespeare is 
well worth the best volume of any other English writer." — 
Halliwell-Ph illipps, 1850. 

//. // is hardly conceivable that Bacon, if the author of 
these works, tvoiild not have claimed the credit of them be- 
fore he died, or, at least, left posthumous proofs that would 
have established his title to them. 

Bacon had one great aim in life, — an aim that, it 
seems to us, gave a fine consistency to all that he 
did. He sought to instruct in better ways of think- 

wretched stuff was brought out to an overflowing house amid great 
excitement. The young man had the audacity even to produce a 
love-letter, purporting to have been written by Shakspere to Anne 
Hathaway, and containing a lock of red hair. 

" All the critics of the land came to look upon the originals. Some 
went upon their knees and kissed them. Hard names were given and 
returned; dunce and blockhead were the gentlest vituperations. The 
whole controversy turned upon the color of the ink, the water-mark 
of the paper, the precise mode of superscription to a letter, the con- 
temporary use of a common word, the date of the first use of promis- 
sory notes, the form of a mortgage. Scarcely one of the learned went 
boldly to the root of the imposture, and showed that Shakespeare 
could not have written such utter trash." — Charles Knight. 

" The Irelands palmed upon literary critics a manuscript play of 
Shakespeare ; it was read, discussed ; an antiquarian or two said 
no ; most of the critics said yes, and fell upon their knees before the 
manuscript. It was put upon the stage : coal-heavers and apprentices 
set literary criticism right in ten minutes. Why ? The stuffed fish, 
thrown down on a bank, might pass for a live fish ; but put it in the 
water ! " — Charles Reade. 

^ Here are two opinions of Rymer : — 

" One of the best critics we ever had." — Pope. 

" The worst critic that ever lived." — Macau/ay. 



Reasons for Concealment. 125 

ing, not his own generation alone, but those that 
were to come after. " I feel myself born," he says 
in one of his letters, " for the service of mankind." 
Accordingly, we find him in his will bequeathing sets 
of his philosophical works and his essays to the chief 
public libraries of the kingdom. He even translated 
them into Latin, for the avowed reason that our 
modern languages are ephemeral, while Latin will 
last as long as human speech.^ In his will, also, with 
the sublime confidence that is inseparable from 
genius, he left his name and memory to the " next 
ages." 

At the same time he showed no anxiety for per- 
sonal credit. His mind was bent on grander results. 
In the introduction to one of his books, unpublished 
at the time of his death, he asks his executors to 
leave some parts of it unprinted, in order that they 
might be passed in manuscript " from hand to hand." 
He had the curious conception that in this imper- 
sonal way certain truths might take deeper root. 
Then follow these noble words : — 

" For myself my heart is not set upon any of those things 
which depend on external accidents. I am not hunting for 
fame. I have no desire to found a sect, after the fashion of the 
heresiarchs ; and to look for any private gain from such an 
undertaking as this, I should consider both ridiculous and 
base. Enough for me the consciousness of welL-deserving, 
and those real and effectual results with which fortune itself 
cannot interfere." 

1 Latin was at that time the common language of scholars through- 
out the civilized world. Bacon, who appreciated, perhaps more than 
any other man then living, the advantages of such a medium, thought 
it would remain so indefinitely. He failed to perceive that a language 
for scholars, /ifr sc, would retard not only the diffusion of knowledge 
but its advancement. 



126 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

The ring of these words three centuries have not 
dulled. They will ring through all time, for they 
are of pure gold. 

It should be remembered, too, that Bacon had an 
ambition to occupy his father's seat on the woolsack, 
and that to be known as a writer of plays for money 
would have been fatal to his advancement. After 
his downfall he had not the heart, if he had the will, 
for the exposure. He may well have hesitated to 
make another invidious confession in the face of a 
frowning world.^ 

" The question why Bacon, if he were the composer of the 
plays, did not acknowledge the authorship, is not difficult to 
answer. His birth, his position, and his ambition forbade him, 
the nephew of Lord Burleigh, the future Lord Chancellor of 
England, to put his name on a play bill. In the interest of his 
family and of his political career, the secret must be so strictly 
preserved that mere anonymity would not be sufficient. A live 
man-of-straw, a responsible official representative known to 
every one, was required. No person could be better fitted for 
such a purpose than an actor, wise enough to understand and 
appreciate what was to his own advantage. Perhaps this 
' Johannes Factotum ' of Greene's did not know the name of 
his benefactor. But even if he did know the name, it was 
obviously to his interest to keep from the world, and particu- 
larly from his gossiping companions, a secret which brought 
him money and fame." — Allge?neme Zeitimg. 

1 A French critic has conjectured that Bacon may have left instruc- 
tions to his executors to divulge the secret at some opportune time 
after his death, but that the alarming growth of Puritanism, culmi- 
nating in its complete ascendancy under Cromwell twenty-five years 
later, rendered such a step inexpedient. Holding his reputation in 
trust and knowing what a fierce popular storm the announcement 
would cause, they may have deemed it their duty to let the plays 
remain as " Mr. William Shakespeare's," until such time as these 
writings might reveal by their own light the name and genius of the 
author. 



Reasons for Concealment. 127 

Sir Walter Scott kept his authorship of the Wa- 
verley Novels from the public for more than twelve 
years, because he deemed the writing of fiction be- 
neath the dignity of a clerk of courts and of a land- 
owner. Thirty-two persons shared the secret. 

The letters of Junius are among the most cele- 
brated of literary productions. In elegance of dic- 
tion, in perspicuity and force of argument, in display 
of knowledge, in boldness and in high moral tone, 
they have seldom been surpassed ; but the writer 
carried the secret with him to his grave. And we 
have no reason to believe that while indulging in this 
self-abnegation, he had any other title, as Bacon had, 
to immortal honor. 

The popular ballad, ' Auld Robin Gray,' was dis- 
owned for a period of fifty years by the gifted woman 
who wrote it. It was not until some other per- 
son had claimed the authorship that the secret was 
disclosed. 

It must not be supposed, for an instant, that if 
Bacon wrote the plays he did not appreciate them. 
He confessed to a correspondent that certain of his 
writings (not described by him, but, without doubt, 
like the Essays, literary in their character) might 
after all do more for his fame than those others upon 
which he was expending his greatest energies.^ And 
yet it is equally certain that, if he then had the plays 

1 " As for my Essays and some other particulars of that nature, I 
count them but as the recreations of my other studies, and in that sort 
purpose to continue them ; though I am not ignorant that that kind 
of writing would, with less pains and embracement, perhaps yield 
more lustre and reputation to my name than those other which I 
have in hand." — Bacon to Bishop Andrews, 1622. 



128 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

in mind, he could not have anticipated for them the 
species of idolatry with which they are now regarded. 
No man can entirely dispossess himself of the preju- 
dices of the age in which he lives. The moral atmos- 
phere exerts a pressure upon the intellect as great 
as that of the physical upon the body. Bacon's 
mind was so filled with a sense of the infinite im- 
portance of his new method in philosophy that 
everything else "paled its uneff"ectual fires" in 
comparison. 

Authors are very apt to misjudge the relative 
values of their different works. Galileo is said to 
have considered his theory of the tides (which was 
wholly erroneous) a more brilliant triumph of 
his skill than all his discoveries in the heavens.^ 
Descartes subordinated his beautiful exposition of 
the rainbow to an absurd doctrine of planetary vor- 
tices. Milton thought his ' Paradise Regained ' a 
finer poem than the 'Paradise Lost.' Wellington 
would never admit that Waterloo was his greatest 
battle. Is it, then, extraordinary that Francis Bacon, 
contemplating the vast results which he knew would 
follow, and which actually did follow, the appearance 
of his ' Instauratio Magna,' neglected other composi- 
tions upon which he had spent only his recre- 
ative hours, which nearly every one about him 
despised, which a great essayist quoted from, one 
hundred years later, as though they were then un- 
known, and over which David Garrick, fifty years 
later still, created a sensation among his fellow-actors 

1 Galileo strangely assumed that tides ebb and flow but once in 
twenty-four hours. 



Errors mid AnackroJiisms. 129 

in London by using the text as it had come from the 
author, instead of one from scribblers and mounte- 
banks to -which they had become accustomed? 

///. The plays contain anachronisms a?id other errors 
which Bacon, " who took all knowledge for his province,''' 
could not have committed. 

Chief among the errors in question, of sufficient 
importance to be noted here, are the following : — 

1. The famous one in the quotation from Aris- 
totle •^ — 

" Young men, whom Aristotle thought 
Unfit to hear moral philosophy." 

Troilus and Cressida, II. 2. 

It was political philosophy that Aristotle referred 
to ; but Bacon makes the same mistake. He quotes 
the Greek as saying, — 

" Young men are no fit auditors of moral philosophy." 

Even in their blunders our two authors were not 
divided. 

2. The curious conception of heat in its " mode of 
motion," one flame pushing another by force out of 
its place. 

Shakespeare : — 

" Even as one heat another heat expels, 
Or as one nail by strength drives out another." 

Two Gentlemen of Verona, II. 4. 

"One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail." 

Coriolamis. 

^ " Ath rrjs iroAiTiKrjs ovk iCTTiv oIkuos dKpoaryjs 6 veos.'^ — Nicoma- 
chean Ethics, I. 3. 

9 



130 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

Bacon : — 

" Flame doth not mingle with flame, but remaineth contigu- 
ous." — Advancement of Learning. 

" Clavum clavo pellere " (To drive out a nail with a nail). — 
Promus. 

The materiality of heat was a dogma of the an- 
cients. It held almost absolute sway over mankind 
till long after the time of Francis Bacon ; but this 
nail illustration, found in Bacon's intellectual work- 
shop and reproduced in the plays, is startling. It 
may fairly be said to clinch the argument. 

3. Mark Antony tells the Romans that he comes 

" To bury Cssar, not to praise him," 

notwithstanding the fact that the Romans did not 
bury the bodies of their dead. 

The play was written for an English stage, and for 
an audience to whom cremation was practically un- 
known. The reference to burial indicates the art, 
rather than the ignorance, of the dramatist. What 
would our critics say of a famous actor of modern 
times who always armed the Roman guard in the 
play with Springfield muskets ! 

" Shakespeare turns his Romans into Englishmen, and he 
does right, for otherwise his nation would not have understood 
him." — Goethe. 

4. A Trojan hero quotes Aristotle, Cleopatra plays 
billiards, and a clock strikes the hours in ancient 
Rom.e. 

Historical perspective is not necessary to the 
drama. The poet sees the world reflected on a retina 
that ignores time and place. He idealizes facts. 




Globe Theatre. 



Errors and Anachronisms. 133 

Egypt, Greece, Rome, Pericles, Caesar, are so many 
stars set in his firmament, and shining apparently in 
one plane. This illusion extended even to the acces- 
sories of the stage in Shake-speare's day. There was 
no scenery to help the spectators.^ Imagination was 
left to its own unaided wings, with nothing but the 
atmosphere of the play to sustain it. At the call of 
the magical flute piping through the Globe, billiards, 
clocks, churchyards, seaports. Ilium, all local and 
temporary objects of sense, " shot madly from their 
spheres," in blind obedience to the melody.^ 

1 The want of scenic effects is thus portrayed by Sir Philip 
Sidney : — 

" You shall have Asia of the one side and Africa of the other, and 
so many other under kingdoms that the player, when he comes in, 
must ever begin with telling where he is. . . . Now, you shall have 
three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then you must believe the 
stage to be a garden ; by and by, we have news of a shipwreck in the 
same place, and we are to blame if W2 accept it not for a rock. Upon 
the back of that comes a hideous monster, with fire and smoke, and 
the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave ; while, in the 
mean time, two armies fly in, represented with four swords and buck- 
lers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field ? " 

'^ It may be well to add, on this subject of anachronisms, that the 
game of billiards was known to the ancients before the time of Cleo- 
patra, and that the boundaries of Bohemia, it is said, once extended 
to the sea-coast. These facts, however, are immaterial. Is it pos- 
sible to conceive that the author of ' Coriolanus,' 'Julius Caesar," 
'Anthony and Cleopatra,' ' Timon of Athens,' and 'Troilus and 
Cressida,' whoever he was, did not know that Aristotle lived hun- 
dreds of years after the time of Hector ? 

It was one of the rules laid down by Lessing, perhaps the ablest 
literary critic that ever lived, that dramatic art should represent not 
what men have done, but what under given circumstances, without 
regard to actual occurrences, men would do ; not historical truth, but 
the laws and principles of human nature. Goethe followed this rule 
in the composition of his ' Egmont,' making Machiavelli Margaret of 
Parma's secretary, though Machiavelli died fifty years before Mar- 



134 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

" Poesy is feigned history, which, not being tied to the laws 
of matter, may at pleasure join that which nature hath severed, 
and sever that which nature hath joined, and so make unlawful 
matches and divorces of things." — Bacon. 

" There is no reason why an hour should not be a century 
in the calenture of the brains that can make the stage a field." 
— Dr. Johnson. 

Numerous other errors of a minor character are 
found in the plays, though, hke the spots on the 
sun's disk, they are lost to all but professional 
observers in the radiance that envelops them. Para- 
doxical as it may seem, however, these very blem- 
ishes are a distinct indication of Bacon's authorship. 
We find the same in his prose works. The great 
philosopher, notwithstanding his industry and his 
learning, was singularly careless in some of the 
minutiae of his work. The sublime confidence with 
which he employed his mental powers often made a 
" sinner of his memory." It was simply impossible, 
in the multiplicity and magnitude of his productions, 
particularly if the plays be superadded, to prevent 

garet's time, and assigning for the conduct of his hero motives 
which we know did not exist. In the ' Lay of the Last Minstrel ' the 
author introduces Sir Michael Scott, a wizard who flourished four 
hundred years before. 

To Lessing belongs the honor of having been first in the world to 
appreciate and expound the true genius of " Shake-speare." In defi- 
ance of the whole school of French critics, by the members of which 
" Shake-speare " was regarded as an "inspired idiot" or "drunken 
savage," he declared that not only was the Englishman superior to 
Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, but that he was the originator of a new 
method of writing tragedy, destined to overthrow the tyranny of the 
Greek. That is to say, " Shake-speare " repudiated the ancient 
models for dramatization, precisely as Bacon did for science, and 
with equal claims to a complete mastery. 



Errors and Anachronisms. 135 

unimportant errors from creeping in. In no other 
way can we account for the false quotation from 
Solomon in the " Essay of Revenge," or that from 
Tacitus in the " Essay of Traditions." The gram- 
matical mistakes in the Latin entries of the Pronius, 
written with his own hand, would send a school-boy 
to the bottom of his class, but they put a tongue in 
every wound of syntax found in the plays. 

In this connection it may not be amiss to quote a 
few of Bacon's " Apothegms," with Devey's notes 
(Bohn's standard edition) appended to them, as 
follows : — 

" Michael Angelo, the famous painter, made one of the 
damned souls in his portraiture of hell so like a cardinal, his 
enemy, as everybody at first sight knew it. Whereupon the 
cardinal complained to the Pope, humbly praying it might be 
effaced. The Pope said to him, ' Why, you know very well I 
have power to deliver a soul out of purgatory, but not out of 
hell.' " 

The victim was not a cardinal, but the Pope's mas- 
ter of ceremonies. 

" A king of Hungary took a bishop in battle, and kept him 
prisoner. Whereupon the Pope writ a monitory to him, for 
that he had broken the privilege of holy church and taken his 
son. The king, in reply, sent the armor wherein the bishop 
was taken, and this only in writing, ' Know now whether this be 
thy son's coat ? ' " 

It was Richard Coeur de Lion who did this, and 
not a king of Hungary. 

"Antigonus, when it was told him the enemy had such a 
volley of arrows that they did hide the sun, said: ' That falls 
out well, for it is hot weather, and so we shall fight in the 
shade.' " 



136 Bacon vs. Shakspere, 

This was a speech, not of Antigonus, but of a 
Spartan, previously to the battle of Thermopylae. 

" One of the seven was wont to say that laws are like cob- 
webs, where small flies are caught, but the great break 
through." 

This was said, not by a Greek, but by Anacharsis, 
the Scythian. 

" An orator of Athens said to Demosthenes, ' The Athenians 
will kill you if they wax mad.' Demosthenes replied, ' And they 
will kill you if they be in good sense.' " 

This retort was made to Demosthenes by Phocion. 

" Demetrius, King of Macedon, had a petition offered him 
divers times by an old woman, and answered that he had no 
leisure. Whereupon the woman said aloud, ' Why, then, give 
over to be king.' " 

This happened, not to Demetrius, but to Philip. 

" A philosopher disputed with Adrian, the emperor, and did 
it but weakly. One of his friends, that stood by, afterwards 
said to him : ' Methinks you were not like yourself in argument 
with the emperor. I could have answered better myself.' 
' Why,' said the philosopher, ' would you have me contend with 
him that commands thirty legions ? ' " 

This took place, not under Adrian, but tmder 
Augustus Caesar. 

" Chilon said that kings' friends and favorites are like count- 
ers, that sometimes stand for one, sometimes for ten, and some- 
times for an hundred." 

This was a saying of Orontes. 

"Alexander, after the battle of Granicum, had very great 
offers made to him by Darius; consulting with his captains 



Errors and Anachronisms. 137 

concerning them, Parmenio said : ' Sure, I would accept these 
offers, if I were Alexander.' Alexander answered : ' So would 
I, if I were Parmenio.' " 

This happened after the battle of Issus. 

The above are gross blunders, and, being in the 
domain of history, they are far more astonishing than 
any found in the dramas of " Shake-speare." Abbott 
testifies on this point as follows : — 

"We have abundant proof that he [Bacon] was eminently 
inattentive to details.^ His scientific works are full of inaccu- 
racies. King James found in this defect of his chancellor the 
matter for a witticism, — ' De minimis non curat lex!' " ^ 

" Inexhaustible constructiveness, — that, and not scientific 
patience or accuracy, was his characteristic." — Prof. Minto's 
English Prose Composition, p. 241. 

" Bacon, always in the ancient sense a magnificent, was never 
an exact man." — NichoVs Life of Bacon, p. 171. 

IV. " Shake-speare " and Bacon were of essentially dif- 
ferent types of mind, the ' Novu?n Organum ' and the con- 
ception of ^ Falstaff^ being respectively at opposite poles, and 
wholly beyond the range of one man^s powers.^ 

Bacon's mind had as many facets as a diamond ; 
turn it whichever way you will, it gives a flash. No 
feature of it was more conspicuous, in the eyes of his 
contemporaries, than his wit. Indeed, his wit was 
simply prodigious. Macaulay asserts that in this 
respect he " never had an equal." 

^ " It has been said of Shakespeare that he had a fine contempt 
for details." — Quarterly Review, April, 1894. 

- The law takes no notice of trifles. 

3 We state this objection substantially as given to us by the late 
Francis Parkman. 



v^ 



- y 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



" He possessed this faculty, or this faculty possessed him, in 
a morbid degree. When he abandoned himself to it without 
reserve, as he did in ' Sapientia Veterum,' or at the end of the 
second book of ' De Augmentis,' the feats which he performed 
were not only admirable, but portentous, and almost shocking. 
On those occasions we marvel at him, as clowns on a fair-day 
marvel at a juggler, and can hardly help thinking that the devil 
must be in him." — Macaiilay. 

Bacon had also a sense of humor that must have 
been extraordinary, for, according to Ben Jonson, 
he could with difficulty, even on solemn occasions, 
" spare or pass by a jest." We find some admirable 
specimens of it in the reports of his conversations 
with the Queen, — his powers of repartee sometimes 
proving more than a match for her imperious will. 

It seems like piling Ossa on Pelion to add that the 
world's most famous jest-book we owe to Francis 
Bacon, dictated by him from a sick-bed, entirely 
from memory, in one day.^ No wonder the portly 
Falstaff sprang, full-grown, from such a brain ! 

V. The author of the ' Essay on Love " could not have 
written ' Rofneo and Juliet.'' ^ 

The two productions are certainly widely dissimi- 
lar. In one, the tender passion is a flower in bloom, 
exquisitely sweet and beautiful ; in the other, it is 
torn up by the roots and analyzed scientifically, not 
to say contemptuously. Indeed, Bacon quotes with 

^ "The best jest-book ever given to the public." — Edinburgh 
Review. 

" The best collection of jests in the world." — Macaulay. 
2 Especially urged against us by Mr. Goldwin Smith. 



, Essay on Love. 139 

approval an old saying, that a man cannot love and 
be wise.^ 

We have no direct evidence to show that the au- 
thor of the essay did not possess a susceptible heart. 
To be sure, he was married late (at the age of forty- 
five), and was unfortunate in losing the affections of 
his wife before he died. It may be worthy of note, 
also, that the play was written several years before, 
and the essay several years after, his marriage. We 
cannot admit, however, in any view of his matrimonial 
adventure, that he was disqualified to write the garden 
scene in ' Romeo and Juliet.' It is not necessary to 
possess a trait in order to depict it. " Shakespeare's 
admiration of the great men of action is immense," 
says Professor Dowden, " because he himself was pri- 
marily not a man of action." We instinctively see 
and appreciate what is exactly opposite to us in 
mental aptitudes. Human nature makes an uncon- 

1 Shake-speare makes the same quotation : — 

" To be wise and love 
Exceeds man's might ; that dwells with gods above." 

Troiltis and Cressida, III. 2. 

" The tendency of love, of which Bacon speaks, to ' trouble a man's 
fortunes, and make him untrue to his own ends,' is most forcibly illus- 
trated in the character of Proteus, who contrasts his slavery as a lover 
with Valentine's freedom as a student, thus : — 

' He after honor hunts, I after love ; 
He leaves his friends to dignify them more, 
I leave myself, my friend, and all for love. 
Thou, Julia, thou hast metamorphosed me, 
Made me neglect my studies, lose my time. 
War with good counsel, set the world at naught. 
Made wit with musing weak, heart sick with thought.' " 

Two Gentlemen of Verona, I. i. 

R. M. Theobald. 



140 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

scious effort in this way to round itself out into the 
complete and perfect. The theory of complementary 
colors is based on this tendency. Unity in diversity 
is the ideal of married life. Tom Hood was the wit- 
tiest of men, and at the same time one of the most 
melancholy. The president of a New England theo- 
logical seminary, who was very penurious, preached 
the ablest sermon of his life on charity. The people 
of Scotland are notoriously intemperate every Satur- 
day night; it is said that thirty thousand persons get 
drunk at that time in the city of Glasgow alone ; and 
yet the finest idyl in our language, consecrated to the 
domestic peace and religious sanctity of that season, 
we owe to a Scottish poet, himself in full accord with 
the habits of his countrymen. 

" In ' Venus and Adonis ' the goddess, after the death of her 
favorite, utters a curse upon love which contains in the germ, 
as it were, the whole development of the subject as Shakespeare 
has unfolded it in the series of his dramas." — Gervinus. 

" Shakespeare manifests a total insensibility to the gross 
passion of love. In descriptions of Platonic affection and con- 
ventional gallantry he is unsurpassed; but when he essays to 
be personally tender his muse becomes tediously perfunctory, 
as we see it in ' Hamlet' Then his intense abhorrence of in- 
temperance and personal defilement is another proof of super- 
animal organization, in which he seems to stand alone. In 
what other author of the time do we read anything like his 
intense loathing of them which we find in ' Antony and 
Cleopatra ' ? — 

' To sit 

And keep the turn of tippling with a slave ! 

To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet 

With knaves that smell of sweat.' — I. 4. 

" It may be said that his love of music, of flowers, and of 
perfume was a wholly sensuous love ; but he associates it 



• Dramatic Tastes. 141 

with sublime ideas, which animal natures never do, as in the 
following : — 

' That strain again ; it had a dying fall. 
O ! it came o'er my ear like the sweet south 
That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
Stealing and giving odor.' — Twelfth Night, I. i." 

Thomas W. White's Our English Homer, p. 123. 

" Shake-speare's " ability to assume any character 
— a Romeo, a FalstatT, an lago — without regard to 
his own private sentiments, itself deprives the above 
objection of pertinency and force. 

VI. The author of the plays had a thorough practical 
knoivledge of dramatic art that could have been derived, in 
part at least, only from experience in stage management. 

We are now on William Shakspere's own ground ; 
for not only did he tread the boards himself, but he 
was a successful manager of one or two theatres. 
That Francis Bacon also had a penchant for the busi- 
ness will appear from three considerations, to wit : 

I. He possessed the temperament that fits one for 
it. On this point we summon a pen-and-ink artist of 
exceptional abilities to testify, as follows : — 

" Slight in build, rosy and round in flesh, dight in a sumptu- 
ous suit ; the head well-set, erect, and framed in a thick starched 
fence of frills ; a bloom of study and travel on the fat, girlish 
face, which looks far younger than his years ; the hat and 
feather tossed aside from the broad, white forehead, over which 
crisps and curls a mane of dark, soft hair; an English nose, 
firm, open, straight ; mouth, delicate and small, — a lady's or 
a jester's mouth, — a thousand pranks and humors, quibbles, 
whims, and laughters, lurking in its twinkling, tremulous lines : 
such is Francis Bacon at the age of twenty-four." — Dixans 
Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 25. 



142 Bacon vs. Skakspere. 

2. Bacon was prominent in the dramatic revels at 
Gray's Inn and before the Court. According to 
Chamberlain (who wrote in 161 3), he was the " chief 
contriver" of them. Anthony's tastes in this direc- 
tion were so strong that he removed his residence to 
the neighborhood of the Bull Inn for better oppor- 
tunities to gratify them,^ That his brother shared 
the same indulgence we cannot doubt, for the two 
were involved in a common censure from their 
mother on account of it ; and when Francis rode in 
state through the streets to take his seat for the first 
time on the woolsack, the players turned out en masse 
to do him honor. 

" It is said tliat William Shakespeare once played before 
Queen Elizabeth. There is no record of it in the Court minutes, 
though we cannot find that any of that period have been lost. 
There 's a record, however, that Francis Bacon did. Feb. 8, 
1587, certain gentlemen of Gray's Inn, Bacon among them, per- 
formed before Her Majesty a play called ' The Misfortunes of 
Arthur.' which surely no one can read without being impressed 
with its resemblance to what men call, nowadays, the Shake- 
spearean gait and movement." — Appleton Morgati. 

" There is one play, ' The Misfortunes of Arthur,' in the pro- 
duction of which there can be no doubt that Francis Bacon had 
a share. In the old record of this play he is only credited with 
having contributed the ' dumb shows ; ' but in certain passages 
and scenes there appear the same peculiarities of expression 
and thought as have been found to connect the Shakespeare 
plays with entries in the Promus. It seems easy to distinguish 
the pages which have been illuminated and beautified by his 
hand." — Mrs. Henry Pott, Promus, p. 90. 

" Unless we much mistake, there is a richer and nobler vein 
of poetry running through it than is to be found in any previous 
work of the kind." — J. P. Collier. 

1 The " Shake-speare " plays were then running there. 



« Dramatic Tastes, 143 

3. Bacon regarded the drama as an educational 
instrumentality of the highest value. He says 
of it : — 

" Although in modern states play-acting is esteemed but as a 
ludicrous thing, except when it is too satirical and biting, yet 
among the ancients it became a means of forming the souls of 
men to virtue. Even the wise and prudent, and great philoso- 
phers, considered it to be, as it were, the plectrum of the mind. 
And most certainly, what is one of the secrets of nature, the 
minds of men, when assembled together, are more open to 
affections and impressions than when they are alone." 

In the second book of the ' Advancement of Learn- 
ing,' he recommends that dramatic art be included 
in the regular curriculum of schools. 

After all, the plays are not such as a business 
manager, intent on making money and indifferent to 
literary fame, would write for his theatre. Some of 
them are impracticable on account of their length ; 
they always have to be cut for public use. Others 
are too philosophical. How long would the gods of 
the pit endure ' Troilus and Cressida,' full as it is of 
the profoundest wisdom, and wholly unsuited even 
now for popular presentation? Others, still, are the 
outcome of successive revisions, growing more and 
more fitted for the closet, less and less for the stage. 
Taken together, these writings seem to be the pro- 
ductions of a man who had high subjective ideals, 
who sought relief in them from severer studies, and 
who made pecuniary results a secondary consider- 
ation. 

" Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as 
the earth and the sea. The Iliad of Homer, the songs of 
David, the odes of Pindar, the tragedies of yEschylus, the Doric 



144 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

temples, the Gothic cathedrals, the plays of Shakespeare, all 
and each were made not for sport, but in grave earnest, in tears 
and smiles of suffering and loving men." — Ef/iersoft's Essay 
on Art. 

The opposite view, that the plays were written solely 
for the theatre and for money, leads Richard Grant 
White to the following rediictio ad absurdimi : — 

"All that we know of his [Shakspere's] life and of his 
domestic career leaves us no room for doubt that, if his public 
had preferred it, he would have written thirty-seven plays like 
' Titus Anaronicus,' just as readily, though not as willingly, 
as he wrote ' As You Like It,' ' King Lear,' ' Hamlet,' and 
' Othello.' " Shakespeare Stiidies, p. 20. 

" He wrote what he wrote merely to fill the theatre and his 
own pockets." — Ibid., p. 209. 

We find the same degrading sentiment in one who 
was still more unjust to Bacon : — 

" For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight. 
And grew immortal in his own despite." 

Pope. 

" It has been frequently observed that, if this view be ac- 
cepted, it is at the expense of investing him [Shakespeare] with 
a mean and sordid disposition." — Halliwell-Phillipps. 

Such is the inevitable consequence of attempting 
to make the facts of Shakspere's life fit the writings of 
•' Shake-speare." Messrs. White and Halliwell-Phil- 
lipps are, perhaps, our two best authorities on the 
Shakspere side of the question, and they would have 
us believe that the noblest productions of the human 
mind are the offspring of vulgarity as well as of 
ignorance. 

But there is still a deeper depth of absurdity, and 
Mr. White does not hesitate to make the plunge : — 



* Knowledge of Warwickshire. 145 

" He had as much deliberate purpose in his breathing as in 
his play-writing." — Studies in Shakespeare, p. 209. 

No wonder that Mr. White pronounces Shakspere 
a "miraculous miracle," or, in other words (as care- 
fully defined by him), a miracle that is not a miracle ! 
It is almost shocking to see an able man driven by 
inexorable logic to such an extremity. 

VII. The author of the plays had ititimate knowledge of 
persons and localities in the neighborhood of Stratford, and 
of certain peculiarities of speech prevailing thei-e. 

The local references, on which the first part of the 
above statement is based, are mostly found in the 
Induction to the play of ' The Taming of the Shrew.' 
The localities mentioned there are Wincot and Bur- 
ton-Heath. The former is probably VVilmecote, a 
hamlet near Stratford, and the latter, Barton-on-the- 
Heath, a small town in the extreme southwestern 
part of the county. There are other Wincots in 
England, but the one distinguished as having been 
the residence of Marian Hacket can hardly be mis- 
taken, on account of its comparative proximity to 
Sly's birthplace. The tradition that Shakspere was 
accustomed to make the buxom ale-wife's premises 
his favorite place of resort required two hundred 
years to get itself into print, and is doubtless 
apocryphal. 

These local allusions are explainable on one of two 
grounds, to wit : — 

I. In 1598 Bacon rendered a great service to the 
crown. He introduced into the House of Commons, 
of which body he was the acknowledged leader, a 
bill to arrest decay of tillage, by requiring all land- 

10 




146 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

owners to restore to the plough, within eighteen 
months from the date of the passage of the act, every 
acre of land that had been taken from it and given 
to pasturage since the beginning of the Queen's 
reign, a period of forty "years. The bill itself was 
a high-handed procedure, in clear violation of the 
principles of political economy as now understood, 
but made necessary at that time in order to counter- 
act the influence of another absurd piece of legisla- 
tion, under which products of pasturage could be 
exported for sale, while those of tillage could not. 
The Commons supported Bacon enthusiastically, but 
the Lords, Essex among them,^ resisted. A parlia- 
mentary battle followed, with Coke at the head of the 
barons and Bacon at the head of the burgesses. The 
result was the triumphant passage of the bill, and a 
royal grant to its champion of a valuable lease at 
Cheltenham, twenty-five miles from Stratford, and 
twenty from Barton-on-the-Heath. 

Furthermore, in 1606, Bacon married a step-daugh- 
ter of Sir John Packington, whose residence was 
within an easy drive in another direction from Strat- 
ford. He was also connected by marriage with Sir 
Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, in the immediate vicinity 
of Stratford. It w^ould be very remarkable if under 
these circumstances Bacon did not become familiar 
with the valley of the Avon, in the branches of which 
all the above-mentioned places, with the exception 
of Barton-on-the-Heath, are situated. 

2. ' The Taming of the Shrew ' is one of those 

1 Essex took great pains to place himself in opposition to Bacon, 
coming to London expressly for the purpose. The breach between 
them had been widening for two or three years. 



Warwickshire Provincialisms. 147 

plays in the Shakespearean canon with the composi- 
tion of which " Shake-speare " himself is generally- 
considered to have had little to do. The question is 
an open one. Critics divide on it, not only as to 
what part of it he actually wrote, but whether he 
wrote any part whatever. Richard Grant White sums 
up the case as follows : — 

" In my opinion it is the joint production of Greene, Mar- 
lowe, and possibly Shakespeare, who seem to have worked 
together for the Earl of Pembroke's servants during the first 
three years of Shakespeare's London life. Much the greater 
part of it appears to have been the work of Greene ; Marlowe 
probably but little, and Shakespeare, if at all, much less." — 
Ed. of Shakespeare s Works^ IV. 391. 

The nativity of the author has also been inferred 
from the use in the plays of words peculiar to the 
dialect of Warwickshire. Mr. Wise devoted a chap- 
ter to this subject in his book ' Shakespeare : his 
Birthplace and its Neighborhood ; ' but Professor 
Langlin, whose scholarly criticism in this field of re- 
search commands our confidence, has published the 
following conclusions in a review of it : — 

" I have been led to examine his [Wise's] list of alleged pro- 
vincialisms of Shakespeare, and am much surprised to find how 
very uncertain is their evidence as to the actual locality in 
which the writer really lived. Wise's argument proves too 
much, and therefore, in my opinion, proves nothing." — Shake- 
speariana., I. 185. 

A partial glossary of Warwickshire provincialisms 
has been compiled by Dr. Appleton Morgan, and 
subjected to a critical analysis in the columns of the 
"London Daily Telegraph " by Mrs. Henry Pott, with 
results as follows : — 



148 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

1. "Of the 518 words enumerated, there are 46 only which 
are not so current in Surrey, Kent, Sussex, Wiltshire, Hamp- 
shire, Lincolnshire, and Leicestershire (and perhaps in any other 
English county) as they are in Warwickshire." 

2. " Of the 46 which we do not recognize as common to the 
southern and eastern counties, not one is to be found in Shake- 
speare." 

VIII. Contemporaneous iestimofiy establishes the identity 
of Shakspere the actor and '^Shakespeare " the drajuatist. 

Under this head four persons only can be sum- 
moned as witnesses. They are John Heminge, Henry 
Condell, Leonard Digges, and Ben Jonson.^ The 
first two were fellow-actors with Shakspere on the 
stage. They were also beneficiaries under his will, 
receiving each a ring. In strict accord with these 
known facts, and in flat contradiction to our theory 
of the origin of the plays, they declare, in the preface 
to the first folio (of which they were at least nominal 
editors), that the author was their friend, and that he 
was not then living. Unfortunately for their reputa- 
tion for sincerity, however, they also declare, in the 
' Address to Readers ' which follows the preface, that 
they had in their hands the author's own manuscripts 
(the appearance of which they describe), and that 
they were thus enabled to substitute, for the stolen 
and mutilated individual quartos, a collective version 
absolutely perfect in all its parts. Everybody knows 

1 " I own at once that those evidences are scanty ; . . . there are 
but four [contemporaries] who directly identify the man or the actor 
with the writer of the plays." — Ifiglebys Essays, p. 24 (1888). 

In this list we substitute Digges for Chettle, for reasons which will 
fully appear in the text. 



. Heminge, Condell and Digges. 149 

that these last statements are untrue. The book they 
printed contains on an average about twenty errors 
to the page, or twenty thousand in all. In some 
places poetry is printed as prose; in others, gems, 
sparkling with thought in the quartos, are omitted ; 
in others still, names of actors are given instead of 
those of the dramatis persoiice, showing that in such 
cases they followed copies that had been previously 
used in the theatre, and followed them, too, " out of 
the window." On the ground of insincerity, there- 
fore, we must ask Messrs. Heminge and Condell to 
step down from the witness-stand ; we cannot accept 
their testimony even under oath. 

" I suppose that I must, in the next place, cite the ostensible 
editors of the first collection of Shakespeare's works, . . . but, 
unfortunately for their credit and our own satisfaction, their 
prefatory statement contains, or at least suggests, what they 
must have known to be false." — Dr. Ingleby. 

The next witness is Leonard Digges, also one of 
the immortal few who helped, with poetic lubrica- 
tions, to launch the first folio upon the public. He 
testifies distinctly that the author of the plays had 
had a monument erected to his memory at Stratford : 

" Shake-speare, at length thy pious fellows give, 
The world thy works ; thy works, by which, out-live 
Thy tomb, thy name must ; when that stone is rent. 
And time dissolves thy Stratford monument, 
Here we alive shall view thee still. This book, 
When brass and marble fade, shall make thee look 
Fresh to all ages." Leonard Digges. 

The following verses, written by Digges, were also 
intended, it is said, to accompany the above in the 



150 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

introduction to the first folio, but are found prefixed 
to a volume of the Shake-speare poems printed in 
1640: — 

" Next, Nature only helped him ; for look thorough 
This whole book, thou shalt find he doth not borrow 
One phrase from Greeks, nor Latins imitate, 
Nor once from vulgar languages translate. 
Nor, plagiary-like, from others glean, 
Nor begs he from each witty friend a scene 
To piece his acts with : all that he doth write 
Is pure his owp ; plot, language exquisite." 

Mr. White, who was an unmitigated Shaksperean, 
stands aghast at these lines, wholly unable to account 
for what he calls the "sad blunder" in them. Was 
the witty Digges really so ignorant ?-^ 

It will be noticed that the entire quartette of these 
witnesses (including Ben Jonson) ^ were engaged, 
either as editors or contributors, in the printing of the 
first folio. It is impossible to name a single person, 
taking no part in this symposiu^n of wit, who can be 
quoted as authority on the point at issue. 

We are well aware that Henry Chettle is said by 
all but two of the Shaksperean commentators of 
the last one hundred years to have testified to the 
literary ability of Shakspere the actor, and thus indi- 
rectly identified him with the dramatist. The facts 
of the case do not warrant any such conclusion. 
Chettle was editor of a posthumous pamphlet, en- 
titled a ' Groatsworth of Wit,' by Robert Greene. 
He was also author of ' Kind Heart's Dream,' a book 
published later in the same year (1592), In the 

^ Digges was known as a "wit of the town." 

2 For a discussion of Jonson's testimony, see p. 91 et seq. 



♦ Chettles Testimony. 151 

preface to the latter work he apologizes to some one 
who had taken offence at certain personal allusions 
in Greene's pamphlet, and held him, as editor, re- 
sponsible for them. 

We quote from the pamphlet as follows : — 

" To those gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance, that spend 
their wits in making plays, R. G. wisheth a better exercise and 
wisdom to prevent his extremities. . . . Base-minded men, all 
three of you, if by my misery you be not warned ; for unto none 
of you (Hke me) sought those burrs to cleave ; those puppets, I 
mean, that speak from our mouths, those antics garnished in 
our colors. . . . Yes, trust them not ; for there is an upstart 
crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart 
wrapped in a playefs hide, supposes he is as well able to 
bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and being an 
absolute Johannes FactottDu, is, in his own conceit, the only 
Shake-scejie in a country." 

That the putative author of the " Shake-speare " 
dramas is referred to in the closing sentence of the 
above, there can be little doubt; because of the 
parody, not only on the name, but also on a line in 
the third part of ' King Henry VI., " O tiger's heart, 
zvrapped in a woman's hide ! " It is conceded, also, 
that the character of the reference was such as would 
naturally cause offence. But was Shakspere one of 
those whom Chettle represents as offended, and to 
whom, as the biographers claim, he apologizes in 
commendatory terms? On this point we quote from 
Chettle himself, in the preface above mentioned: 
" Among others his ' Groatsworth of Wit,' in which a 
letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively by 
one or two of them taken." One or two of whom? 
Evidently, of the play-makers (Marlowe, Nash or 



1^2 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

Lodge, and Peek, it is said), who had been addressed 
by Greene, who had been warned against the Johannes 
Factotum, and who had themseh^es been characterized 
elsewhere in the pamphlet, one as an atheist and an- 
other as a blasphemer and drunkard. Chettle then 
goes on to say : — 

" With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, 
and with one of them I care not if I never be ; the other whom 
at that time I did not so much spare as since I wish I had . . . 
because myself have seen his demeanor no less civil than he, 
excellent in the quahty he professes ; besides, divers of worship 
have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his 
honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approves his 
art." 

It is very remarkable that of all the biographers of 
Shakspere, so far as noted, Frederick Gard Fleay 
alone states this matter correctly, thus : — 

" In December, Chettle issued his ' Kind Heart's Dream,' in 
which he apologizes for the offence given to Marlowe in the 
' Groatsworth of Wit,' ' because myself have seen his demeanor,' 
etc. To Peele he makes no apology, nor indeed was any re- 
quired. Shakespeare was not one of those who took offence ; 
they are expressly stated to have been two of the authors 
addressed by Green ; the third (Lodge) not being in England." 
— Chronicle History of the Life and Works of William Shake- 
speare, p. III. 

Even Dr. Ingleby admits that Chettle's commenda- 
tory words cannot be applied to Shakspere without 
a violation of the text. It is necessary, he says, to 
interpolate a few words, to the effect that Greene 
wrote his letter to divers playwrights, his friends and 
associates, and against another, his avowed enemy, 
and that two of these, including the latter, took 
offence ! 



• Composite Authorship. 153 

That is to say, for the purpose of saving Chettle's 
testimony to Shakspere, he would not only fabricate 
proofs in support of it, but reduce the whole passage 
to nonsense. This would only add another, however, 
to the fourteen deliberate forgeries already uttered at 
various times in behalf of the legendary dramatist. 
No wonder that Dr. Ingleby finally confesses, in 
despair, that contemporary evidence on this point is 
** contemporary rumour," and that he attaches " little 
weight " to it ! 

For further elucidation of this subject, see ' The 
Athenaeum,' Feb. 7, 1874. An intelligent writer, 
himself a Shaksperean, there contends that the two 
who took offence were Marlowe and Nash. It is 
certain, he says, that " Shakespeare was not one of 
them." 

IX. The theory of composite authorship can alone account 
for the zvide diversity of talents exhibited in the plays. 

The objections to the above are twofold : — 
I. It has no external evidence, direct or circum- 
stantial, in its favor. 

The difficulty of believing that one man could have 
written the plays and been restrained by prudential 
considerations from acknowledging them, even with 
the concession that he had other and, in his own 
opinion, higher claims to fame, is very great; but it 
vanishes in the light of this composite theory. That 
so important a secret should have been shared on 
equal terms by several persons, and no hint of it 
escape in any direction, while then, as now. every 
friend had a friend, and every friend's friend had a 
friend, is simply incredible. 



154 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

2. The theory is inconsistent with the unique char- 
acter of the plays. 

The Shake-spearean " gait and movement," wher- 
ever it may be found, is unmistakable. Indeed, if the 
pages of the first folio were so many stone slabs taken 
from an ancient river-bed, they could not bear clearer 
marks of the stride of a colossus. No play in the 
canon is without these giant footprints. 

" The stamp of a mighty genius is impressed on them all." — 
Schlegel. 

" No one ever yet produced one scene conceived and ex- 
pressed in the Shakespearean idiom" — Coleridge's Table- 
Talk, p. 214. 

" He is not only superior in degree, but he is also different in 
kind. . . . We never saw a line in any modern poet that re- 
minded us of him." — LowelVs A7nong My Books, p. 180. 

" Upon the most insignificant of Shakespeare's beauties there 
is an impress stamped which to all the world proclaims, ' I am 
Shakespeare's.' " — Lessing. 

What is it, then, that the advocates of this com- 
posite theory ask us to believe? It is this: that 
there lived at one time, in one country and in inti- 
mate personal association, several poets, not only 
greater than any that lived in the world before them, 
and greater than any that have lived since, but so 
similar in literary style, in character, and in intellect- 
ual development that it is impossible to distinguish 
one from another in their work. Not only this, but 
we must also believe that these men, while exhibiting 
transcendent powers of genius in dramas which they 
published under the common pseudonym of " Shake- 
speare," were all of them at the same time writing 



Shakespeare s Dark Period. 155 

and publishing over their own names other poetical 
works which James Russell Lowell declared to be in 
every instance " immeasurably inferior " to those 
known as " Shake-speare's." Juliet's prayer that 
Romeo at his death might be cut out in little stars 
and 

" make the face of heaven so fine 
That all the world will be in love with night," 

was an extravagant hyperbole ; but what shall we 
say of those who, out of " Shake-speare," would 
create blazing suns? 

X. Shakspere' s life furnishes the key to the writings that 
bear his na?ne. 

Critics who take this view simply hug their chains 
to keep them from clanking. Coleridge, Emerson, 
Schlegel, Whipple, Hallam, Furness, all substantially 
agree that (in the language of one of them) the life 
of William Shakspere and the writings ascribed to 
him cannot be brought " within a planetary space of 
each other." Professor Swing was convinced that 
Shakspere must, at least, " have kept a poet." 

If we come to particulars, the case is even worse. 
Everybody admits that in or about the year 1600 a 
change came over the dramatist's spirit. He then 
sought, as Professor Dowden remarks, to " appre- 
hend life adequately." He fell " into the shadow of 
some of the deep mysteries of human existence." 
" Somehow," a new relation " between his soul and 
the dark and terrible forces of the world " began to 
exist. How can this be explained from anything in 



156 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

the life of the man Shakspere? How can we account, 
consistently with what we know of him, for this sud- 
den and stupendous sweep of mind from Falstaff and 
Romeo to ' Othello,' ^ ' Macbeth,' and ' Lear ' ? " Shak- 
spere had by this time," we are told, " mastered the 
world from a practical point of view ; he was a pros- 
perous and wealthy man." Yes, he was buying 
houses and lands, bringing suits against debtors, 
scheming for a title, and preparing to settle down for 
the remainder of his days in a town where but few 
of his prospective neighbors could read or write, 
where there were no books, and where his domestic 
surroundings would be fetid watercourses, stable 
refuse, mud-walls, and piggeries. Without ambition 
for anything higher or better, with no calamity of 
any kind to disturb the easy current of his thoughts, 
it is simply inconceivable that he could at that 
time have taken the new departure which Professor 
Dowden ascribes to him.^ It is only in the " whine 

1 " The tragedy of ' Othello,' Plato's records of the last scenes 
of the career of Socrates, and Isaac Walton's Life of George Her- 
bert are the most pathetic of human compositions." — William 
Wordsworth. 

2 Our friends on the other side have not overlooked this difficulty; 
with what success they have met it, the following, perhaps the best 
adventure of the kind, may show. We beg to assure our readers that 
it was not intended as a caricature : — 

" There were outward causes and reasons enough ; . . . He was 
doomed to look on, while that on which he had spent all his mental 
energy was profaned and blackened by rude hands ; he was doomed 
to see genuine poetry, and with it the deep seriousness of the Christian 
view of life, banished from the age. It was, therefore, but natural that 
he should have had misgivings, lest his name and all his labors would 
be soon forgotten, perhaps, forever. . . . Well, then, might the tone of 
his mind have sunk into the harsh dissonance which he seems to have 
labored to embody in his last works, in order to shake it off from his 



Shakespeare s Dark Period. 157 

of poets," says James Russell Lowell, that the " out- 
ward world was cold to- him." 

Turning now to Bacon, all difficulty vanishes. 
To him life had suddenly become very dark. The 
execution, however merited, of Essex, his old friend, 
gave him a terrible shock; he had some fears of 
assassination on account of it. It caused the death 
of his only brother, Anthony, his " comfort," between 
whom and himself existed the tenderest affection. 
His mother had recently become violently insane. 

The great object of his life, the reform of philoso- 
phy, seemed now even more remote from him than 
ever. To use his own words, uttered a little while 
before, he was indifferent whether God or Her Maj- 
esty called him. 

'' Here we see that agony and conflict which Professor Dow- 
den so eloquently describes ; here is the cry of anguish which 
is echoed in Hamlet's strife with destiny, and in Lear's wild 
wail of unutterable pain. If Professor Dowden had been able 
to search in this direction for the original of the portrait which 
he draws of the mind and art of Shakespeare, how would his 
deepest speculations have been more than justified ! What new 
and profound and precious comments would he have made 
could he have brought his glorious conjectures into this historic 
environment! It is almost shocking, it is inexpressibly humili- 
ating, to see his attempts to establish a rapport for them with 

own bosom.' [Italics our own.] — Ulrici's Shakespeare's Dramatic 
Art, p. 244. 

The same critic finds, also, in the dissipations and frivolous excesses 
which, according to tradition, marked Shakspere's youth, and which 
finally drove him out of Stratford, matter for a sage reflection : — 

" How often may we thus trace the guiding finger of God in the 
errors of individuals, and the consequences to which they lead!" — 
Ibid., p. 74. 

" Zeal without knowledge," is Mr. Lowell's comment on Ulrici's 
book. 



158 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

the vulgar, hollow mask of a life which is all that research can, 
possibly find in the Stratford personality." — Robert M. Theo- 
bald, Baconiana, I. p. 63. 

XI. The author of the plays was a great genius, not to be 
judged by ordinary standards, or under the common limi- 
tations of human nature. 

Genius has no known antecedents; a man possess- 
ing it always takes the world by surprise. For this 
reason, the ancients were prone to regard genius, not 
as the natural resultant of qualities combined with 
infinite variations under the laws of heredity, but as 
something specially conferred upon favored individ- 
uals from a higher source.^ 

In modern times this view has become obsolete. 
What is merely wonderful (that is, unexplainable) 
has ceased to be miraculous. No one now pretends 
that Csesar, or Plato, or any other highly endowed 
member of our race, was more than human. The 
old superstition still lingers, however, in a mild form 
around Shakspere. And no wonder; for what is 
displayed in his reputed writings and what we know 
of his life are so utterly at variance that, as Ralph 
Waldo Emerson declared, the twain cannot be united 
by a marriage ceremony. Nothing but a bolt from 
heaven could fuse them together. 

" Nobody believes any longer that immediate inspiration is 
possible in modern times, and yet everybody seems to take it 

1 The number of progenitors tha have contributed to make every 
man what he is, within the space of twenty generations only, or about 
six hundred years, exceeds a million. The individual variations in 
character and endowment are therefore almost infinite. 



• Bacon, a Poet. 159 

for granted of this one man, Shakespeare." — LoweWs Among 
My Books, p. 201. 

But even this fanatical conception of " Shake- 
speare " is inadequate. It fails to account for the 
learning embedded in the plays, — learning so vast, 
so multifarious, and often so technically exact that 
twenty-four different occupations in life have in turn 
been assigned to the dramatist. 

XII. A?nong Bacon's known works we find some frag- 
7nents of verse which show him utterly wa?iting in the fine 
frenzy of the poet. 

Bacon's acknowledged poetry, it is safe to say, 
would not have made him immortal. We know that 
he wrote a sonnet to the Queen, but, unless it be 
included in the " Shake-speare " collection, it is lost. 
Two years before he died, and while incapacitated 
by illness for good work, he paraphrased a few of 
the Psalms, which he afterward published, and which 
would seem to be at first sight only so many nails 
driven into the coffin of his poetic aspirations. It is 
manifestly unfair, however, to judge of his capabili- 
ties in this line by a sick-bed effort. He was neces- 
sarily hampered, too, by the restrictions that always 
attend the transplanting of an exotic in full bloom, 
lest the little tendrils of speech that give the flower 
its beauty and fragrance be broken. The president 
of a New England college once made a similar adven- 
ture with the Psalms; but when the book appeared, 
the author's friends bought up the entire edition, and 
suppressed it. 

The following are two of the Psalms in Bacon's 



i6o Bacon vs. Shakspeve. 

version, — the two that represent, perhaps, the oppo- 
site extremes of merit among the seven : — 



Psalm CIV. 

Father and King of pow'rs, both high and low, 
Whose sounding fame all creatures serve to blow, 
My soul shall with the rest strike up thy praise, 
And carol of thy works and wondrous ways. 
But who can blaze thy beauties, Lord, aright ? 
They turn the brittle beams of mortal sight. 
Upon thy head thou wear'st a glorious crown, 
All set with virtues polish'd with renown ; 
Thence round about a silver veil doth fall 
Of crystal light, mother of colors all. 

The compass heav'n, smooth without grain or fold, 
All set with spangs of glitt'ring stars untold, 
And strip'd with golden beams of power unpent, 
Is raised up for a removing tent. 
Vaulted and arched are his chamber beams 
Upon the seas, the waters, and the streams. 
The clouds as chariots swift do scour the sky, 
The stormy winds upon their wings do fly ; 
His angels spirits are, that wait his will, 
As flames of fire his anger they fulfil. 



Nor is it earth alone exalts thy name. 

But seas and streams likewise do spread the same. 

The rolling seas unto the lot doth fall 

Of beasts innumerable, great and small ; 

There do the stately ships plough up the floods, 

The greater navies look like walking woods. 

The fishes there far voyages do make. 

To divers shores their journey they do take. 

There thou hast set the great Leviathan, 

That makes the seas to seethe like boiling pan. 



Translations of the Psalms. i6i 

All these do ask of thee their meat to live, 
Which in due season thou to them dost give. 
Ope then thy hand, and then they have good fare ; 
Shut thou thy hand, and then they troubled are. 



Psalm XC. 

O Lord, thou art our home, to whom we fly, 
And so hast always been from age to age ; 

Before the hills did intercept the eye. 

Or that the frame was up of earthly stage ; 

One God thou wert, and art, and still shalt be; 

The line of time, it doth not measure thee. 



Teach us, O Lord, to number well our days, 
Thereby our hearts to wisdom to apply ; 

For that which guides man best in all his ways 
Is meditation of mortality. 

This bubble light, this vapor of our breath. 

Teach us to consecrate to hour of death. 

Return unto us. Lord, and balance now, 

With days of joy, our days of misery ; 
Help us right soon, our knees to thee to bow. 

Depending wholly on thy clemency. 
Then shall thy servants, both with heart and voice, 
All the days of their life in thee rejoice. 

Begin thy work, O Lord, in this our age. 
Show it unto thy servants that now live ; 

But to our children raise it many a stage. 
That all the world to thee may glory give. 

Our handy-work, likewise, as fruitful tree. 

Let it, O Lord, bless'd, not blasted, be. 

" It is not safe to judge of his [Bacon's] poetical powers by 
his paraphrase of the Psalms, which was written, just as Mil- 

II 



1 62 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

ton's paraphrase was written, in what is to-day the purest dog- 
gerel. But that these versions were so written purposely, in 
order that the meanest intellects might commit them to memory 
and sing them, no one at all familiar with the times can doubt 
for a moment. If there is any degree in doggerel, Milton's 
verses are the most ridiculous." — A ppleton Morgan. 

Milton was a Christian scholar, as well as a great 
poet. No man ever lived better fitted than he was, 
it would seem, to reproduce to our ears the devout 
strains of Hebrew melody. For purposes of compar- 
ison we give, also, two of his Psalms out of the nine- 
teen paraphrases which he attempted, as follows : — 



Psalm VII. 

Lord, my God, to Thee I fly, 
Save me and secure me under 

Thy protection while I cry ; 
Lest as a lion (and no wonder) 
He haste to tear my soul asunder, 

Tearing, and no rescue nigh. 



God is a just judge and severe, 
And God is every day offended. 

If the unjust will not forbear. 

His sword he whets, His bow hath bended 
Already, and for him intended 

The tools of death, that waits him near. 

(His arrows purposely made He 
For them that persecute.) Behold, 

He travails big with vanity ; 

Trouble he hath conceived of old 
As in a womb; and from that mould 

Hath at length brought forth a lie. 



Milto7i^s Psalms. 163 

He digged a pit, and delved it deep, 

And fell into trie pit he made : 
His mischief, that due course doth keep 

Turns on his head ; and his ill trade 

Of violence will, undelayed, 
Fall on his crown with ruin steep. 

Then will I Jehovah's praise 
According to his justice raise, 
And sing the name and deity 
Of Jehovah, the Most High." 



Psalm VIII. 

O Jehovah, our Lord, how wondrous great 
And glorious is Thy name thro' all the earth ! 

So as above the heavens Thy praise to set 
Out of the tender mouths of latest birth. 

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou 
Hast founded strength, because of all thy foes: 

To stint the enemy, and slack the avenger's brow, 
That bend his rage Thy providence to oppose. 



Fowl of the heavens, and fish that thro' the wet 
Sea paths in shoals do slide, and know no dearth ; 

O Jehovah, our Lord, how wondrous great 
And glorious is Thy name thro' all the earth. 

We think our readers will agree with us that hon- 
ors -are at least easy between these distinguished 
translators. 

To find doggerel, however, we need not travel be- 
yond the record in this literary suit. There are 
astonishing specimens of it in " Shake-speare," even 



164 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

in plays which are admitted by every one to be his 
own from beginning to end. Richard Grant White 
(who prided himself on the title which he had ac- 
quired as " Shakespeare's Scholar ") says of a passage 
in ' King Lear ' : — 

"It is hardly more than a succession of almost trite moral 
reflections put in a sententious form, and written in verse as 
weak, as constrained, and as formal as that of a French 
tragedy." 

We quote from Mr. White, also, in reference to an- 
other play of undoubtedly Shake-spearean origin : — 

" Although as a whole, ' A Midsummer Night's Dream ' is 
the most exquisite, the daintiest, and most fanciful creation 
that exists in poetry, and abounds in passages worthy even of 
Shakespeare in his full maturity, it also contains whole scenes 
which are hardly worthy of his 'prentice hand, and which yet 
seem to bear unmistakable marks of his unmistakable pen. It 
is difficult to believe that such lines as — 

' Do not say so, Lysander ; say not so. 
What though he love your Hermia ? Lord, what though?' 

were written by Shakespeare." 

Think of the gems in this same wonderful drama, 
— gems 

" That on the stretched forefinger of all time 
Sparkle forever," 

and then, by the side of them, of such a speech as this: 

" When at your hands did I deserve this scorn ? 
Is 't not enough, is 't not enough, young man. 
That I did never, no, nor never can. 
Deserve a sweet look from Demetrius' eye ? " 



Bacon as a Poet. 165 

The truth is, Bacon's version of the Psalms is an 
essential part of our case ; it explains what would 
otherwise have been inexplicable in " Shake-speare." 
The author of the plays, as Mr. White observes, was 
not always writing ' Hamlet.' ^ 

" It must be owned that, with all these great excellences, he 
[Shakespeare] has almost as great defects ; and that, as he has 
certainly written better, so he has perhaps written worse, than 
any other." — Pope. 

Fortunately, we have a specimen of Bacon's poetry 
for which we need not apologize. This is also a 
translation ; but being in the precincts of profane 
literature, it justified a freer hand. We give it entire, 
as follows : — 

" The world 's a bubble, and the life of man 
Less than a span ; 
In his conception wretched, from the womb 
So to the tomb ; 

1 Wordsworth's ' Ode on Intimations of Immortality in Childhood' 
is, without doubt, the finest production of its kind in our language. 
Mr. Emerson pronounced it the " high-water mark " of the nineteenth 
century. Among other works of the same author, we find a poem of 
fifty pages, composed in 1798, and kept in manuscript for more than 
twenty years, subject to frequent revision, and intended, as the pref- 
ace informs us, for a permanent place in the world's literature. 
When it finally appeared, Byron demanded to know whether such 
trash could evade contempt. Sir Walter Scott accused the author of 
" crawling on all fours." Indeed, we know of nothing in the whole 
range of English verse more dismally trivial than this poem, unless 
we may consider it redeemed by the amazing implication in one stanza 
that the planet Mars has a ruddy hue because the people who inhabit 
it are red-haired. In the Ode we have the sublimity of genius ; its 
degradation in " Peter Bell." Petrarch has given us the finest hymn 
and the most wretched sonnet in the world. 



1 66 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

Cursed from his cradle, and brought up to years 

With cares and fears ; 
Who, then, to frail mortality shall trust 
But limns the water, or but writes in dust. 

" Yet whilst with sorrow here we live oppressed, 

What life is best? 
Courts are only superficial schools. 

To dandle fools. 
The rural parts are turned into a den 

Of savage men : 
And where 's the city from foul vice so free 
But may be termed the worst of all the three ? 

" Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed, 

Or pain his head. 
Those that live single take it for a curse. 

Or do things worse. 
Some would have children; those that have them moan. 

Or wish them gone. 
What is it, then, to have or have no wife. 
But single thraldom, or a double strife ? 

" Our own affections still at home to please 

Is a disease; 
To cross the seas to any foreign soil. 

Perils and toil. 
Wars with their noise affright us ; when they cease, 

We 're worse in peace. 
What then remains, but that we still should cry 
Not to be born, or, being born, to die ? " 

It is not known when the above was written. We 
find it for the first time in a volume of Greek epi- 
grams, published in 1629, three years after Bacon's 
death, and ascribed to him on good authority. All 
that is claimed for it is a high degree of skill in versi- 
fication, — the opportunity not admitting a flight of 



Bacon as a Poet. 167 

genius. The original is a dull, placid stream flowing 
through a meadow, — not a cataract from a mountain 
height. 

" The merit of the original consists almost entirely in its 
compactness, there being no special felicity in the expression, 
or music in the metre. In the English, compactness is not 
aimed at, and a tone of plaintive melody is imparted, which is 
due chiefly to the metrical arrangement, and has something very 
pathetic in it to my ear." — Bacon's Works (Spedding), VII. 
271. 

We have seen that Bacon declared himself a 
"concealed poet" (p. 85); that he wrote a sonnet 
to Queen Elizabeth (p. 159) ; that he was probably 
author of another sonnet, which Florio commended 
as written by one who " loved better to be a poet 
than to be counted so" (p. ^6^)', also, that John 
Aubrey, Milton's friend, pronounced Bacon " a good 
poet, but concealed " (p. 85). Edmund Howes, a 
contemporary, brings us another testimonial to the 
same general effect, for he reckoned Bacon among 
the poets then living, assigning him the eighth, and 
" Shake-speare " the thirteenth, place in the list. In 
a book published in 1645, ^^^ supposed to be by the 
eminent poet, George Withers, also a contemporary, 
an account is given of a great assize held on Mount 
Parnassus. In this assembly Apollo sits at the sum- 
mit; but next to him, as chancellor of Parnassus, is 
placed Francis Bacon. Edmund Spenser appears as 
clerk. 

But this is not all. Bacon himself once admitted, 
in the freedom of his private correspondence, that he 
was no stranger on these poetic heights. It was in 



1 68 Baco7i vs. Shakspere. 

1595, at the very time when the " Shake-speare " 
plays were coming out at the rate of two a year. It 
was also immediately after Bacon had started his 
famous scrap-book, in which so many turns of ex- 
pression, appropriate only to dialogue, are noted, 
and in which also we find that curious reference to 
" law at Twickenham for the merry tales," — Twick- 
enham being then his frequent place of abode. ^ 

The Earl of Essex had been for several months 
using his efforts to secure for Bacon an office under 
the government, but with so many disappointments 
that Bacon finally turned his own attention to some- 
thing else, — perhaps to secure ready money, or 
" quick revenue," as he called it, of which he was 
then in pressing need, — for he wrote to the Earl as 
follows : — 

" I am neither much in appetite [for the ofifice] nor much in 
hope ; for, as to the appetite, the waters of Parnassus are not 
like the waters of the Spaw, that give a stomach, but rather they 
quench appetites and desires." 2 

" Parnassus, a mountain in Central Greece, in mythology 
sacred to the muses. The Delphian sanctuary of Apollo was 
on its slope, and from between its twin summit peaks flows the 
fountain of Castalia, the waters of which were imputed to im- 
part the virtue of poetic inspiration." — Century Dictionary. 

1 The first entry was made in the Promus in December, 1594. 
We have several letters written by Bacon in 1595, closing with the 
words, "from my lodge at Twicknam." 

2 How far Essex' knowledge extended in this direction we do not 
know; but we do know that, even if it covered the early dramas, it 
would not have been considered by him of much importance ; for, 
with the exception of 'Hamlet' in its first draft, and 'Romeo and 
Juliet,' none of the great Tragedies had been written at the time of 
his death. We must not measure the magnitude of the secret, as it 
then was, by our present conceptions of it. 



Bacon as a Poet. 169 

To get the full force of these facts, however, we 
must study Bacon's prose, which the critics, before 
the shadow of this controversy fell upon and chilled 
them, thus described : — 

" In this band of scholars, dreamers, and inquirers appears 
the most comprehensive, sensitive, originative of the minds of 
the age, Francis Bacon ; a great and luminous intellect, one of 
the finest of this poetic progeny." — Taine. 

" Like the poets, he peoples nature with instincts and desires ; 
attributes to bodies an actual voracity; to the atmosphere, a 
thirst for light, sounds, odors, vapors, which it drinks in; to 
metals, a sort of haste to be incorporated with acids." — Ibid. 

" He thought in the manner of artists and poets, and spake 
in the manner of prophets and seers." — Z^zV/. 

" His abilities were a clear confutation of two vulgar errors : 
first, that judgment, wit, fancy, and memory cannot conveniently 
be in conjunction in the same person ; whereas, our knight was 
a rich cabinet, filled with all four, besides a golden key to open 
it." — Thomas Fuller's Worthies. 

" Abilities which commonly go single in other men are all 
conjoined in him." — Dr. Rawley (Bacon's chaplain). 

" All his literary works are instinct with poetry in the wider 
sense of the term. Sometimes it is seen in a beautiful simile or 
a felicitous phrase; sometimes in a touch of pathos. More 
often in the rhythmical cadence of a sentence which clings to 
the memory as only poetry can." — A. F. Blaisdell. 

"In his style there is the same quality which is applauded 
in Shakespeare, — a combination of the intellectual and the 
imaginative, the closest reasoning in the boldest metaphor." — 
Shaw. 

" The utmost splendor of imagery." — Mackintosh. ^ 

" Like unto Shakespeare, he takes good note of any defi- 
ciency of syllabic pulsations, and imparts the value of but one 
syllable to the dissyllables heaven, many, evejt, goeth; and to 
glittering and chariot but the value of two, precisely as Shake- 
speare would." — Prof. J. W. Tavener. 

" The style is quaint, original, abounding in allusions and 



lyo Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

witticisms, and rich, even to gorgeousness, with piled-up analo- 
gies and metaphors." — Encyc. Brit. 

" It is as an inspired seer, the prose-poet of modern science, 
that I reverence Lord Bacon." — Sir Alexander Grant. 

" Few poets deal in finer imagery than is to be found in 
Bacon. . . . His prose is poetrj-." — Lord Car?tpbell. 

" Lord Bacon was a poet. His language has a sweet and 
majestic rhythm which satisfies the sense, no less than the al- 
most superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intel- 
lect. It is a strain which distends, and then bursts the 
circumference of the reader's mind, and pours itself forth 
with it into the universal element with which it has perpetual 
sympathy. 

" Plato exhibits the rare union of close and subtle logic with 
the Pythian enthusiasm of poetry, melted by the splendor and 
harmony of his periods, which hurry the persuasion onward as 
in a breathless career. His language is that of an immortal 
spirit rather than of a man. Lord Bacon is, perhaps, the only 
writer who, in these particulars, can be compared with him." ^ — 
Shelley. 

" Much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world, 
amidst things as strange as any that are described in the Ara- 
bian Tales." — Macaiilay. 

" The little volume of Bacon's ' Essays ' exhibit, not only 
more strength of mind, more true philosophy, but more origi- 
nality, more fancy, more imagination, than all the volumes of 
Plato." — Walter Savage Landor. 

" We seldom fail to meet in his pages with some broad gen- 
eralization, some color of fancy, some apt classical reference or 
startling epigram. No other man ever so illumined a mass of 
technical details with the light of genius." — NichoPs Francis 
Bacon : His Life and Philosophy. 

1 Our attention was called to this remarkable testimony of the 
poet Shelley by Mr. R. M. Theobald, who makes the following com- 
ment : " The truth is, that while the critics have their eye on the 
Baconian theory, they call Bacon prosy, unimaginative, and incapable 
of poetry. When they sincerely describe him. they one and all assign 
to him Shakespearean attributes ; so that, if you cull the eulogies 
passed on Bacon, you have a portrait of the author of Shakespeare." 



• Bacon, a Poet. 171 

" Bacon's anticipations [in physical science] are like those of 
the 'Fairy Queen' about the stars, — flights of an imagination 
almost as unique in prose as Shakespeare's in verse." — A^ichoVs 
Francis Bacon: His Life and Philosophy, Part II. p. 193. 

" It is his imagination which gives such splendor and attrac- 
tiveness to his writings, clothing his thoughts in purple and gold, 
and making them move in majestic cadences." — Whipple's Lite- 
rature of the Age of Elizabeth, p. 301. 

" His superb rhetoric is the poetry of physical science. The 
humblest laborer in that field feels, in reading Bacon, that he 
himself is one of a band of heroes, wielding weapons mightier 
than those of Achilles or Agamemnon, engaged in a siege no- 
bler than that of Troy." — Ibid., p. 323. 

" We have only to open ' The Advancement of Learning ' to 
see how the Attic bees clustered above the cradle of the new 
philosophy. Poetry pervaded the thoughts, it inspired the 
similes, it hymned in the majestic sentences of the wisest of 
mankind." — E. Biiluuer Lytton. 

" He seems to have written his essays with the pen of 
Shakespeare." — Alexander Smith. 

" I infer from this sample that Bacon had all the natural 
faculties which a poet wants, — a fine ear for metre, a fine feel- 
ing for imaginative effect in words, and a vein of poetic pas- 
sion." — Spedding. 

It is admitted, then, that Bacon was at least a prose 
poet. No man ever caught more quickly or aptly 
the resemblances of things, or had a finer ear for the 
melody of speech. His metaphors trooped, as it 
were, to the sound of music. Professor Tavener 
compares his cadences to the swinging of a pendu- 
lum beating seconds. We know he was abnormally 
sensitive to the moods of nature, for he had fainting 
spells at every eclipse of the moon. We know he 
had a passion for the drama, shown by the part he 
took in devising stage performances before the Court, 
and in the revels at Gray's Inn. We know, also, he 



I 72 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

had an inexhaustible fund of humor, that poured from 
his tongue with the ripple of laughing waters, and 
needed only the constraints of a written dialogue to 
tumble and foam. 

" The truth is that Bacon was not without the fine frenzy of 
the poet. . . . Had his genius taken the ordinary direction, I 
have little doubt that it would have carried him to a place among 
the great poets." — Spedding's Life of Bacon. 

XIII. BacorCs want of natural sympathy, as shown in 
his treatment of Essex, fails to satisfy our ideal, derived 
from the dramas themselves, of their great author ; for the 
world has bestowed upon Shakespeare not otily its reverence 
but its love. 

It cannot be denied that the author of the plays 
possessed a heart of the most tender sensibilities. 
Like the tides of the ocean, his sympathies were 
" poured round all," penetrating every bay, creek, 
and river of human experience. The voyager o'er 
the mighty current of his thought always feels em- 
barked on the bosom of the unbounded deep. It is 
not enough, therefore, that Bacon was a man of lofty 
aims ; that he devoted his great powers with tireless 
assiduity to the interests of mankind; was he also 
of that rare type of character that, with greatness 
of intellect, glows and scintillates at every touch of 
feeling? 

This brings us to a most important test, the per- 
sonality of Lord Bacon himself. Time has scarcely 
dimmed his figure ; we know him almost as inti- 
mately as though he were walking our streets. We 
see him gathering violets in his garden, stringing 



Bacons Philanthropy. 173 

pearls of thought in his essays, swaying the House 
of Commons with his eloquence, holding the scales 
of justice in the courts, marking the trend of social 
progress in his histories, and breaking the chains 
that had bound the human intellect from the days 
of Aristotle. His mind and heart were in touch 
with every interest of mankind. He was poet, orator, 
naturalist, physician, historian, essayist, philosopher, 
statesman, and judge. No man ever more completely 
filled the ideal of the Roman poet : — 

" Homo sum ; humani nihil a me alienum puto." 

" The leading peculiarity of Bacon's literary style is its sym- 
pathetic nature." — Abbott's Life of Bacon. 

" Love of mankind with Bacon is not merely the noblest 
feeling, but the highest reason ; a rich and mellow spirit of 
humanity. 

" Perhaps the finest sentence in his writings, certainly the one 
which best indicates the essential feeling of his soul as he 
regarded human misery and ignorance, occurs in his description 
of one of the fathers of Solomon's House. ' His countenance,' 
he says, ' was as the countenance of one who pities men.' " — 
E. P. Whipple. 

" The small, fine mind of Labruyere had not a more delicate 
tact than the large intellect of Bacon. His understanding re- 
sembled the tent which the fairy Parabanon gave to Prince 
Ahmed. Fold it, and it seemed a toy in the hand of a lady ; 
spread it, and the armies of powerful sultans might repose 
beneath its shade." — Macatilays Essay on Bacon. 

" A soft voice, a laughing lip, a melting heart, made him 
hosts of friends. No child could resist the spell of his sweet 
speech, of his tender smile, of his grace without study, his 
frankness without guile." — Hepworth Dixon s Personal His- 
tory of Lord Bacon, p. 8. 



174 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

" All his pores lie open to external nature ; birds and flowers 
delight his eye; his pulse beats quick at the sight of a fine 
horse, a ship in full sail, a soft sweep of country ; everything 
holy, innocent, and gay acts on his spirits like wine on a strong 
-^ man's blood. Joyous, helpful, swift to do good, slow to think 
evil, he leaves on every one who meets him a sense of friend- 
liness, of peace and power. The serenity of his spirit keeps 
his intellect bright, his affections warm." — Hepworth Dixon'' s 
Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 15. 

He is accused of ingratitude toward his friend 
Essex, first, because he appeared against the accused 
at the trial ; and, secondly, because by superior tac- 
tics he was the means of insuring conviction. 
\ On the first point, it is sufficient to say that 

Bacon was present as an officer of the crown at the 
express command of the Queen, having repeatedly 
forewarned the Earl of the result of his evil courses, 
and duly notified him that, on any breach of the 
peace, he himself would support the government. 
The Earl richly merited his fate. His rebellion 
was one of the meanest, most causeless, and 
most contemptible that has stained the history of 
England. 

" The rigor with which Bacon has been censured for acting 
on the fall of his patron Essex as advocate of the complainant, 
and afterwards laying before the public an account of the pro- 
cess justifying the Queen, appears unjust to any one who con- 
siders how Bacon exerted himself to bring the Earl to reason 
and the Queen to mercy, and at the same time, in virtue of his 
office, he was bound to perform whatever duty the Queen laid 
upon him." — Erdman's History of Philosophy, I. 669 [1890]. 

I On the second, Bacon was prominent in the pro- 

^\] ceedings because his mental stature made him promi- 
nent. As well attempt to force an oak back into its 



Bribery Charges. 175 

acorn as to bring Francis Bacon on any occasion 
down to the level of ordinary men.^ 

In the matter of the bribes, he suffered for the 
sins of society. So far as he was personally culpable, 
it is manifest from his subsequent demeanor that 
chronic carelessness in money matters, and not any 
guile, was at the bottom of the difficulty. To be 
sure, he was lax in the administration of his house- 
hold affairs; but so was William Pitt. Pitt could rule 
an empire, but not his own servants. Bacon con- 
quered nearly every known realm of human knowl- 
edge, but he never invaded the dominions of his 
cook.^ An imperial contempt for money dominated 
both. Venality is the very last sin in the whole cata- 
logue of human frailties of which either of these two 
men could have been guilty, but it is the one with 
which Bacon has been most persistently, cruelly, 
mercilessly charged for more than two hundred and 

1 That he felt himself compromised in public estimation, we know 
very well, for in a letter to the Queen he says : — 

" My life has been threatened and my name libelled." 

We find the same lament in one of the " Shake-speare sonnets, as 
follows : — 

" Then hate me if thou wilt ; if ever, now, 
Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross, 
Join with the spite of fortune." Sonnet XC. 

In another sonnet, the author expresses fear of assassination, an- 
ticipating 

" The coward conquest of a wretch's knife." LXX. 

2 It was the waste of the servants' hall that impoverished them. 
In Pitt's case, the quantity of butcher's meat charged in the bills was 
nine hundred weight a week. The consumption of poultry, of fish, 
of tea, was in proportion. After his death, all parties in the House 
of Commons readily concurred in voting forty thousand pounds to 
satisfy the demands of his creditors. 



1/6 Bacon vs. Skakspere. 

fifty years. A Roman Emperor once indulged in the 
amiable wish that his people had but one head, that 
he might cut it off at a blow. He was a monster ; 
but we confess we find some sad evidences of kinship 
with him in our own heart when we think of the 
calumniators of Francis Bacon, though the most 
brilliant essayist that has ever adorned the literary 
annals of England and the kindest of men be the 
chief offender. The fact that Bacon, with all his 
great abilities, known and acknowledged, could get 
no lucrative ofiice under the government until he 
was forty-six years old, and that he was finally retired 
to private life by the machinations of men notoriously 
venal, may be taken as presumptive proof of the 
independence of his character, as well as of his rec- 
titude and his honor. ^ 

1 Bacon's want of attention to his personal finances (a not uncom- 
mon failing in great men, due to a sort of instinct that the matter is 
beneath them) caused his mother the most lively concern. She even 
interfered at one time to protect him from his own servants. Sped- 
ding tells the following story in point : — 

" In the year 1655. a bookseller's boy heard some gentlemen talk- 
ing in his master's shop ; one of them, a gray-headed man, was de- 
scribing a scene which he had himself witnessed at Gorhambury. He 
had gone to see the lord chancellor on business, who received him in 
his study, and, having occasion to go out, left him there for a while 
alone. 'Whilst his lordship was gone, there comes,' he said, 'into 
the study one of his lordship's gentlemen, and opens my lord's chest 
of drawers wherein his money was, takes it out in handfuls, fills his 
pockets, and goes away without saying a word to me. He was no 
sooner gone but comes another gentleman, opens the same drawers, 
fills both his pockets with money, and goes away as the former did 
without speaking a word.' Bacon, being told, when he came back, 
what had passed in his absence, merely shook his head, and all he 
said was, ' Sir, I cannot help myself.' " 

Montagu relates another incident to the same effect : — 

One day, immediately after Bacon's removal from the chancellor- 



Bacons Downfall. 177 

" No one mistook the condemnation for a moral censure ; no 
one treated Lord St. Albans as a convicted judge. The House 
of Commons had refused to adopt the charge of briberj' ; the 
House of Lords had rejected the attempt to brand him with 
a personal shame ; and society treated the event as one of those 
struggles for place which may hurt a man's fortunes without 
hurting his fame. The most noble and most generous men, the 
best scholars, the most pious clergymen, gathered round him in 
his adversity, more loving, more observant, more reverential, 
than they had ever been in his days of splendor. 

'' Such was also the reading of these transactions by the most 
eminent of foreign ministers and travellers. The French Mar- 
quis d'Effiat, the Spanish Conde de Gondomar, expressed for 
him in his fallen fortunes the most exalted veneration. That 
the judges on the bench, that the members of both Houses of 
Parliament, even those who, at Buckingham's bidding, had 
passed against him that abominable sentence, concurred with 
the most eminent of their contemporaries, native and alien, is 
apparent in the failure of every attempt made to disturb his 
judicial decisions. These efforts failed because there was no 
injustice to overthrow, and there was no injustice to overthrow 
because there had been no corruption on the bench." — Dixon. 

"As regards the official impeachment of Bacon, if taken 
alone, it may establish no more against him than that, amid 



ship, he happened to enter his servants' hall while the servants were 
at dinner. On their rising to receive him, he said : " Be seated ; your 
rise has been my fall." 

" His principal fault seems to have been the excess of that virtue 
which covers a multitude of sins. This betrayed him to so great an 
indulgence toward his servants, who made a corrupt use of it, that it 
stripped him of all those riches and honors which a long series of 
merits had heaped upon him." — Addison. 

" Bacon was generous, easy, good-natured, and naturally just ; but 
he had the misfortune to be beset by domestic harpies, who, in a 
manner, farmed out his ofifice." — Guthrie. 

One writer says that " three of his lordship's servants kept their 
coaches, and some kept race-horses." 



178 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

the multitude of engrossing calls upon his mind, he did not 
extricate himself from the meshes of a practice full of danger 
and of mischief, but in which the dividing lines of absolute right 
and wrong had not then been sharply marked. Hapless is he 
on whose head the world discharges the vials of its angry vir- 
tue ; and such is commonly the case with the last and detected 
usufructuary of a golden abuse which has outlived its time. In 
such cases posterity may safely exercise its royal prerogative of 
mercy." — W. E. Gladstone. 

History presents to us no more pathetic figure 
than that of the great Lord Bacon beseeching in vain 
that he might not be compelled to close his career, 
a career of unexampled usefulness to the world, in 
ignominy. The authorities that condemned him 
remind us of a pack of wolves turning upon and 
rending a wounded comrade. 

" I could never bring myself to condole with the great man 
after his fall, knowing as I did that no accident could do harm 
to his virtue, but rather make it manifest. He seemed to me 
ever by his work one of the greatest men and most worthy of 
admiration." — Ben Jonson. 

" A memorable example to all of virtue, kindness, peaceable- 
ness, and patience." —Peter Boener {Bacon's Apothecary). 

"A friend unalterable to his friends." — ^'/V Toby Matthew. 

" A man most sweet in his conversation and ways." — Ibid. 

" It is not his greatness that I admire, but his virtue." —Ibid. 

" May vour good word grace it and defend it, which is able 
to add a'charm to the greatest and least matters." —5^a«- 
monfs Dedication of a Masque to Bacon, 161 2. 

" I have been induced to think that, if ever there were a 
beam of knowledge derived from God upon any man in these 
modern times, it was upon him." — Dr. Rawiey. 




St. Michael's Church. 



For my burial, I desire it mav be in St. MichaeFs Church, near 
St. A/biins : there lihis my mother buried. — Francis Bacon. 



Bacons Private Character. i8i 

" He struck all men with an awful reverence." — Francis 
Osborne. 

The above are testimonials of Bacon's friends, of 
members of his household, and of literary competitors. 

"They bear witness to the stainlessness of his private life, 
his perfect temperance, self-possession, modest demeanor, and 
his innocent pleasantry." — NichoVs Life of Bacon, p. 202. 

"Retiring, nervous, sensitive, unconventional, modest." — 
Spedding s Life of Bacon. 

" Those who saw him nearest in his private life give him the 
best character." — Ibid. 

" At the same time that we find him prostrating himself be- 
fore the great mercy-seat and humbled under afflictions which 
lay heavy upon him, we see him supported by the sense of his 
dignity, his zeal, his devotion, and his love of mankind." — 
Joseph Addison. 

" Beloved for the courteousness and humanity of his be- 
havior." — David Htifne. 

" Bacon declared that his works were rather the fruit of his 
time than of his genius. — Gervimis. 

" He attached little importance to himself. ... No correct 
notion can be formed of Bacon's character till this suspicion of 
self-conceit is scattered to the winds." — ^^^^/A Life of 
Bacon. 

" Weighted by the magnificence of his character." — Ibid. 

" Of an unusually sweet temper and amiable disposition." — 
Encyc. Brit., art. Bacon. 

"He was generous, open-hearted, affectionate, pecuharly 
sensitive to kindness, and equally forgetful of injuries." — 
Foivler''s Life of Bacon. 

" All who were great and good loved and honored him." — 
Anbrey. 



1 82 Bacon vs, Shakspere. 

" His acquaintance was eagerly sought by the eminent of 
every class, and by all whom an ingenuous love of excellence 
prompted to render homage to the greatest general philosopher, 
the first orator, and the finest writer of his age." — Aikifi's 
Court of James /., II. p. 201. 

" He hungered, as for food, to rule and bless mankind." — 
Hepworth Dixon. 

" One with whom the whole purpose of living was to do great 
things to enlighten and elevate his race, to enrich it with new 
powers, to lay up in store for all ages to come a source of 
blessings which should never fail." — Chur ell's Life of Bacon, 
p. I. 

" His greatness, his splendid genius, his magnificent ideas, 
his enthusiasm for truth, his passion to be the benefactor of his 
kind, the charm that made him loved by good and worthy 
friends, amiable, courteous, patient, delightful as a companion, 
ready to take any trouble." — Ibid. 

"It is not too much to say that in temper, in honesty, in 
labor, in humility, in reverence, he was the most perfect 
example that the world has yet seen of the student of nature." 
— Ibid. 

" The name which he aspired to, and for which he was will- 
ing to renounce his own, was ' Benefactor of Mankind.' " — 
Delia Bacon. 

" He stands almost alone in literature, a vast, dispassionate 
intellect, in which the sentiment of philanthropy has been 
refined and purified into the subtle essence of thought. 

" It may be questioned whether Shakespeare himself could 
thoroughly have appreciated Bacon's intellectual character. 
He could have delineated Bacon in everything but in that 
peculiar philanthropy of the mind, that spiritual benignity, that 
belief in man and confidence in the future," which are Bacon's 
distinguishing characteristics. — Whipple's Age of Elizabeth. 

" A deep sense of the misery of mankind is visible through- 
out his writings. ... He has often been called a utilitarian, 



Bacon's Private Character. 183 

not because he loved truth less than others, but because he 
loved men more." — Ellis's Preface to Bacon's Philosophical 
Works. 

"From the day of his death, his fame has been constantly 
and steadily progressive ; and we have no doubt that his name 
will be named with reverence to the latest ages, and to the 
remotest ends of the civilized world." — Macaulay. 



V. 

COINCIDENCES. 

Let us now mark certain coincidences in the com- 
position of the plays with the well-known habits and 
studies of Francis Bacon. 

a. A prominent characteristic of Bacon, in his 
literary work, was the frequency with which he in- 
vented new words. It is safe to say that no other 
writer, with possibly one exception, ever did so 
much to diversify and enrich our English tongue. 
We find many of these words actually taking shape 
before our eyes in the Promus, — perhaps a bright 
nucleus from the Latin in a nebulous envelope of 
prefixes and suffixes, preparing to shine forever with 
a radiance of its own in human speech. 

" A dictionary of the English language might be compiled 
from Bacon's works alone." — Dr. Johnson. 

In tliis business of word-building, however, Bacon 
had a strange double. It is estimated that Shake- 
speare gave three thousand new words, inclusive of 
old words with new meanings, to our language. And 
these additions were also, like Bacon's, derived chiefly 
from the Latin. They were such as only a scholar 
could impose upon the king's vernacular. 



• Vocabulary 185 

" Shakespeare's plays show forty per cent of romance or 
Latin words." — Richard Grant White. 

" He did not scruple even to naturalize words for his own 
use from foreign springs, such as exsufflicate and derascinate j 
or to coin a word whenever the concurring reasons of sense 
and verse invited it, as in fedary, iittrinse, intrinsicate, insist- 
ttre, and various others." — Hudson. 

" The vocabulary of Shakespeare became more than double 
that of any other writer in the English language. Craik esti- 
mates it at twenty-one thousand words, without counting in- 
flectional forms, while that of Milton was but seven thousand. 
. . . English speech, as well as literature, owes more to him 
than to any other man." — Clark's Elements of the English 
Language, p. 134. 

" Shakespeare displayed a greater variety of expression than 
probably any other writer in any language." — Miiller''s Science 
of Language., ist Series, p. 267. 

Mr. Hallam calls attention to Shake-speare's fond- 
ness for words used in their primitive meanings. He 
sees a student's instinct in this attempt, contrary in 
many cases to popular usage, to keep our language 
true to its Latin roots. He gives the following 
examples : — 

" Things base and vile, holding no quantity (value). 

Rivers that have overborne their co7itinents (the continente 
rip a of Horace). 

Imagination all compact. 

Something of great constancy (consistency). 

Sweet Pyramus tratislated \.\\qtq. 

The law of Athens which by no means we may extefiuate.^'' 

We append a few additional examples under this 
head : — 

Expedieftt, a word derived from the Latin expedire, mean- 
ing to disentangle the foot, and thus to hasten. Shake-speare 



1 86 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

always uses it in this sense, as we do its cognate expeditious^ 
never applying it to anything merely suitable or advantageous. 

Extravagant, from extra, beyond, outside of; and vagare, 
to wander. Shake-speare applies the word to vagrancy, or 
straying beyond limits, only, as in ' Hamlet ' : — 

" The extravagant and erring spirit hies • 

To his confine." — I. i. 

Probation. This word ordinarily means a period of trial. In 
Shake-speare, however, it means proof, irom probare, to prove. 

" The present object made probation." 

Hamlet, I. i. 

Discourse of reason, from discurrere, to run backward and 
forward between objects, as in ratiocination. A strict Latinism. 

Contraction, from contrahere (p. p. contracttis'), to draw to- 
gether; that is, to come to an agreement, as in marriage, not 
merely to lessen or condense. 

" O, such a deed 

As from the body of contraction plucks 

The very soul." 

Ibid., III. 4. 

A lust of the blood and a permission of the will. This is 
Shake-speare's definition of love. What is meant by " permis- 
sion of the will " ? Permission is from permittere, to send 
away completely, as when one, utterly banishing his will, gives 
full rein to a passion. This meaning of the word has never 
taken root in English. 

Assume. 

" Assume a virtue if you have it not." 

Ibid. 

Does Shake-speare instruct us to be hypocrites ? No, though 
all the commentators so agree= Asswne is from ad-sumere, to 
take to, to acquire. 

Acquire a habit, if you have it not. 

The context especially in the folio, plainly points to the acqui- 
sition of virtue by studied formation of habits. 



Literary Style. 187 



Modesty. 



" An excellent play ; well digested in the scenes ; set down with 
as much modesty as cunning." — Hamlet, II. 2. 

From modestia, meaning titness of things, a whole in which 
all the parts have their proper places and proportions. Cicero 
uses the word in his ' De Officiis,' but feels compelled to ex- 
plain it to the Romans themselves. He says it is equivalent 
to the Greek evra^la. In this sense it is so apt and so re- 
condite that Dr. Furness, in his Variorum edition of ' Ham- 
let,' asks significantly, in italics, "Did not Sh. understand 
Latin ? " 

These examples might be multipHed by the thou- 
sand. They are found as plentifully in the early 
plays as in the later ones. 

b. Bacon had also a wonderful variety at his com- 
mand in manner of writing. In this respect he was 
a literary chameleon. Abbott says of him : — 

" His style varied almost as much as his handwriting; but it 
was influenced more by the subject-matter than by youth or old 
age. Few men have shown equal versatility in adapting their 
language to the slightest change of circumstance and purpose. 
His style depended upon whether he was addressing a king, or 
a great nobleman, or a philosopher, or a friend ; whether he 
was composing a state paper, magnifying the prerogative, ex- 
tolling truth, discussing studies, exhorting a judge, sending a 
New Year's present, or sounding a trumpet to prepare the way 
for the kingdom of man over nature.'' 

It does not follow, of course, that because he had 
this " wonderful ductility," as Hallam calls it, 
therefore he wrote the plays. The converse of 
the proposition, however, is worth noting, viz., 
without it he would have been disqualified for the 
task. 



1 88 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

We must venture one step farther. Did Bacon 
possess among his numerous varieties of style that 
which characterizes Shakespeare? On this point it 
may as well be conceded at once that the essays by 
which he is best known are, for purposes of this 
comparison, the least useful of his writings. They 
are sui generis, so closely packed with thought that 
they can be compared only to cannon-balls. Indeed, 
we should as soon think of comparing the chopped 
sea of the English Channel to the long, rolling swell 
of the Atlantic. 

To face the difficulty squarely, and on terms most 
rigorous for Bacon, we give an example of each, as 
follows : — 

FROM BACON. 

" Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament ; adversity 
is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benedic- 
tion and the clearer revelation of God's favor. Yet, even in the 
Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as 
many hearse-like airs as carols. And the pencil of the Holy 
Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job 
than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many 
fears and distastes, and adversity is not without many comforts 
and hopes. We see in needle-works and embroideries it is more 
pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, 
than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome 
ground. Judge, therefore, of the pleasure of the heart by the 
pleasure of the eye. Certainly, virtue is like precious odors 
when they are incensed or crushed. For prosperity doth best 
discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue." — 
Essay on Adversity. 

FROM SHAKESPEARE. 

" Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; 
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot ; 



• Literary Style. 189 

This sensible warm motion to become 
A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ; 
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, 
And blown with restless violence round about 
The pendant world." 

Measure for Measure, III. i. 

The passage quoted above from Bacon, written 
shortly before his death, is the one Macaulay se- 
lected to show that Bacon's writings, contrary to the 
ordinary course of things, grew more ornate and fan- 
ciful as he grew older. " With him," we are told, 
" the fruit came first, and remained till the last ; the 
blossoms did not appear till late." Why is it that we 
cannot approach " Shake-speare," even on the side 
of Bacon, without encountering a miracle? Why do 
we always enter a land of enchantment, — the last 
refuge of dryads and fairies, where Nature's laws are 
suspended, where we have harvests without seed, 
fruits without buds or flowers, and a brilliant old age, 
preceded by a dull and passionless youth? 

" Nature is always true to herself ; her order was not re- 
versed in the case of Bacon. The bud, the blossom, the fruit 
came in their proper and accustomed procedure. But what if, 
like a prudent husbandman, Bacon sent each to its appropriate 
market, — the flowers of his fancy to the wits and players, the 
fruits of his judgment to the sages and statesmen of his age ? " 
— Smith's Bacon and Shakespeare., p. 22. 

In his ' History of Henry VH.,' Bacon adopted a 
style quite the reverse of that of the ' Essays.' It is 
here that he steps off the tripod. His sentences no 
longer keep step, as though on parade ; they have a 



190 Bacon vs. SJiakspere. 

free-and-easy, almost frolicsome gait, unparalleled in 
the whole range of historical literature. 

One cannot read a page of this work without meet- 
ing such specimens as these : — 

" Empson would have cut another chop [of monej'] out of 
him if the king had not died in the instant." 

" Perkin, for a perfume before him as he went, caused to be 
pubhshed a proclamation." 

" One might know afar off where the owl was by the flight 
of birds." 

" The King began to find where the shoe did wring him." 

" It was an odious thing to the people of England to have a 
king brought in to them on the shoulders of Irish and Dutch." 

" None could hold the book so well to prompt and instruct 
this stage-play as she could." 

" She was to him as Juno was to ^neas, stirring both heaven 
and hell to do him mischief." 

" Then did the King secretly sow Hydra's teeth." 

" The marriage halted upon both feet." 

" Their snowball did not gather as it went." 

" The news came blazing and thundering over into England." 

" From what coast should this blazing star appear? " 

" With the first grain of incense that was sacrificed upon the 
altar of peace, Perkin was smoked away." 

Bacon's letters give us still another style of compo- 
sition, less severe than that of the Essays, and more 
elegant than that of the History. They contain jew- 
els fit to sparkle with " Shake-speare's " — 

" On the stretched forefinger of all time." 

We have space for but one or two examples : — 

" It may be you will do posterity good if, out of the carcass 
of dead and rotten greatness, as out of Samson's lion, there be 
honey gathered for future times." 



• Literary Style. 191 

How beautifully Bacon refers to the Hellenic 
myths as — 

" Gentle whispers, which from more ancient traditions came 
at length into the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks." 

It is characteristic of a very full mind that the flow 
of its thoughts is often disturbed by its own impetu- 
osity. Ideas come from it with a rush. The well is 
bored so deep, and into a reservoir so vast, that the 
bursting current defies restraint. This was the case 
both with Bacon and with the author of the plays. 

" Bacon's mind, with its fulness and eagerness of thought, 
was at all times apt to outrun his powers of grammatical 
expression." — Spedding. 

" The tangled, elliptical, helter-skelter sentences into which 
the impetuous imagination of Shakespeare sometimes hurries 
him." — Christopher lYorth. 

Bacon's literary style had one peculiar feature, 
apparent under all its phrases, which we must not 
omit to mention, viz., a tendency to run into triple 
forms of expression. " There is no end to these 
forms in the writings of Bacon," says Professor 
Tavener. They beat upon the ear with a rhythm as 
unmistakable as that of the resounding sea. Indeed, 
we might have the courage to pronounce them, on 
the part of our author, an easily-besetting sin, were 
they not equally conspicuous in " Sliake-speare'' as the 
following examples will show : — 

FROM BACON. 

" Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability." 

" To spend too much time on studies is sloth ; to use them 
too much for ornament is affectation ; to make judgment wholly 
by their rules is the humor of a scholar." 



192 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

" Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them, and 
wise men use them." 

" Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take 
for granted, nor to find talk and discourse." 

" Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and 
some few to be chewed and digested." 

" Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and 
writing an exact man." 

" If a man write little, he had need have a great memory ; if 
he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read 
little, he had need have much cunning." 

" A man cannot speak to his own son but as a father, to his 
wife but as a husband, and to his enemy but on terms." 

" Give ear to precept, to laws, to religion." 

" Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverent 
than plausible, and more advised than confident." 

" Some ants carry corn, and some their young, and some go 
empty." 

" They cloud the mind, they lose friends, they check with 
business." 

" They dispose kings to tyranny, husbands to jealousy, wise 
men to irresolution." 

" A man's nature is best perceived in privateness, for there 
is no affectation ; in passion, for that putteth a man out of his 
precepts ; and in a new case of experiment, for there custom 
leaveth him." 

" Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for 
execution than for counsel, and fitter for new projects than for 
settled business." 

" Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom ex- 
tinguished." 

" It is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in 
Charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of Truth." 



Literary Style. 193 

FROM " SHAKE-SPEARE." 
"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some 
have greatness thrust upon them." 

" It would be argument for a week, laughter for a month, and 
a good jest forever." 

" One draught above heat makes him a fool, a second mads 
him, and a third drowns him." 

" 'T is slander, 
Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue 
Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath 
Rides on the posting winds." 

" This peace is nothing but to rust iron, increase tailors, and 
breed ballad-makers." 

" Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, 
Blood and revenge are hammering in my head." 

" Had I power, I should 
Pour the sweet milk of concord into Hell, 
Uproar the universal peace, confound 
All unity on Earth." 
" Alas, poor Romeo ! he is already dead ! stabbed with a 
white wench's black eye ; run through the ear with a love-song ; 
the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt- 
shaft." 

" To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently 
a beast." 

" Ay, but, lady, 
That policy may either last so long, 
Or feed upon such nice and waterish diet, 
Or breed itself so out of circumstance. 
That I, being absent and my place supplied, 
My General will forget my love and service." 
" 'T was mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands." 
" This chair shall be my state, this dagger my sceptre, and 
this cushion my crown." 

" She is a woman, therefore may be woo'd ; 
She is a woman, therefore may be won ; 
She is Lavinia, therefore must be loved." 
13 



194 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

" The birds chant melody on every bush ; 
The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun ; 
The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind." 

" Methinks she 's too low for a high praise, too brown for a 
fair praise, and too little for a great praise." 

" She says she will die if he love her not, and she will die 
ere she make her love known, and she will die if he woo her." 

" They say the lady is fair ; 't is a truth, I can bear them 
witness ; and virtuous ; 't is so, I cannot reprove it ; and wise, 
but for loving me." 

" Fairest Cordelia, thou art most rich, being poor; 
Most choice, forsaken ; and most loved, despised." 

" Like lean, sterile and bare land, manured, husbanded, and 
tilled." 

" Her father loved me ; oft invited me ; 
Still questioned me the story of my life. 
From year to year — the battles, sieges, fortunes. 
That I have passed." 

" Sweet Hero ! she is wronged, she is slandered, she is 

undone." 

" I have marked 

A thousand blushing apparitions 

To start into her face ; a thousand innocent shames. 

In angel whiteness, bear away those blushes; 

And in her eye there hath appeared a fire, 

To burn the errors that these Princes hold 

Against her maiden truth." 

" Who is here so base that would be a bondman ? If any, 
speak, for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that 
would not be a Roman ? If any, speak, for him have I 
offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country ? 
If any, speak, for him have I offended." 

The two authors balanced their sentences on the 
same scales.^ 

^ For an admirable discussion on this subject, see Donnelly's 
Great Cryptogram, p. 481 et seq. 



Literary Style. 195 

It is in minor peculiarities, however, that we find 
the strongest evidence of identity. A detective 
always looks at what is unaffected and unconscious 
in a man in order to unmask him. The shaping of a 
letter of the alphabet in handwriting, some little trick 
in gait or voice, an intonation that dates from child- 
hood, these are clews compared with which elaborate 
tropes and figures of speech are of small account for 
our purpose. We want those sources of light which 
cannot be hid under a bushel. Dr. Theobald has 
found one in Bacon's use of the phrase " I cannot 
tell." It is an instance of suppressio veri, not, how- 
ever, with intent to deceive, but to give the thought 
a greater spring. For example, referring to certain 
factious rulings in a lower court by Justice Coke, 
Bacon says, — 

" Wherein your Lordships may have heard a great rattle, and 
a noise oi prcEimitiire j and " — here he adds, as a sort of con- 
temptuous snapper to his lash — "I cannot tell what." 

He simply means that the subject is beneath fur- 
ther notice. 

Again, alluding to a possible war with Spain, he 
wonders that the people of England " should think 
of nothing but reckonings, and audits, and mcum, and 
timm, and I cannot tell what." 

On another occasion he pours out his contempt 
upon the duelling code, on the ground that it rests 
upon absurd conceits; that is, as he says, "upon 
what's before-hand and what's behind-hand, and I 
cannot tell what." 

So in a letter to the King, who was importuned to 



ig6 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

grant further concessions in a matter in which the 
petitioners had already broken their agreements with 
him, Bacon recalls what had already been promised, 
— " lawful and settled trades, full manufactures, mer- 
chandise of all natures, poll money or brotherhood 
money, and I cannot tell what." 

In all these cases, it will be observed. Bacon makes 
a pretence of ignorance for a purpose, — a rhetorical 
stratagem common enough of itself, but never before 
or since in English literature persistently associated 
with the words " I cannot tell." That is to say, 
never before or since with one exception, — in 
" Shake-speare." The author of the plays is con- 
stantly indulging in this same idiosyncrasy. For 
instance, in the ' Merchant of Venice ' Shylock nar- 
rates the story of Jacob outwitting Laban in the 
breeding of sheep, and Antonio asks him, — 

" Was this inserted to make interest good, 
Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams ? " 

Shylock replies, — 

" I cannot tell ; I make it breed as fast." — I. 3. 

In Richard III. Queen Elizabeth demands to know 
why Gloster hates her and her family, and receives 
this answer : — 

" I cannot tell ; the world is grown so bad 
That wrens may prey where eagles dare not perch. 
Since every Jack becomes a gentleman, 
There 's many a gentle person made a Jack." 

That he could tell, and in fact did tell, her rejoin- 
der implies : — 



• Literary Style. 197 

" Come, come, we know your meaning, brother Gloster ; 
You envy my advancement, and my friends." — I. 3. 

In ' Macbeth ' a messenger brings to the King 
news of a bloody battle in which Macbeth and 
Banquo were victorious. He says of these war- 
riors : — 

" I must report they were 

As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks ; 

So they doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe : 

Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds, 

Or memorize another golgotha, 

I cannot tell." — I. 2. 

Not to multiply these examples further, as we 
might easily do, we close with one which, though 
negative in its character, is for that very reason the 
stronger and more conclusive in our favor. Our 
readers must thank Dr. Theobald, a singularly acute 
and brilliant as well as fair-minded critic, for it. 
We quote him as follows : — 

" In 3 'Henry VI.' the Earl of Warwick gives a vivid de- 
scription of the battle between the forces led by himself for the 
King and those led by the Queen and Clifford on behalf of the 
young prince. This passage appears in the original version, 
' The Second Part of the Contention,' published in 1 595, thus, — 

' We at St. Albans met. 
Our battle joined, and both sides fiercely fought. 
But whether 'twas the coldness of the King 
(He looked full gently on his warlike Queen) 
That robbed my soldiers of their heated spleen. 
Or whether 't was report of her success. 
Or more than common fear of Clifford's rigour, 
Who thunders to his captains blood and death, 
I cannot tell,' — 

and then he proceeds to tell how shamefully they were defeated. 



198 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

" Now in this case, / cannot tell is not used, as in the others 
which I have quoted, to express a mock perplexity ; there is no 
counterfeit, no poetic lie here ; the doubt is real. The speaker 
really is unable, amongst all the possible causes of defeat, to 
select the true one, or to say how many causes were combined. 
Precisely the same passage occurs in 3 ' Henry VI.' [published 
in 1623], but now / cannot tell is changed into / cannot judge, 
evidently because, in the poet's mind, the words / cannot tell 
are applicable only to fantastic cases, not to cases of real and 
sincere suspense of judgment." 

In further elucidation of this matter of style, the 
following examples are taken promiscuously from 
the two sets of works. We challenge our readers 
to draw the lines of cleavage between them, with- 
out assistance from the foot-notes : — 

" It is a wonderful thing to see the semblable coherence of 
his men's spirits and his own : they, by observing him, do bear 
themselves like foolish justices ; he, by conversing with them, is 
turned into a justice-like serving man. ... It is certain that 
either wise bearing or ignorant carnage is caught, as men take 
diseases, one of another ; therefore, let men take heed of their 
company." ^ 

" Contrary is it with hypocrites and impostors, for they, in the 
church and before the people, set themselves on fire, and are 
carried, as it were, out of themselves, and becoming as men 
inspired with holy furies, they set heaven and earth together." 2 

" Suspicions among thoughts are like bats among birds, they 
ever fly by twilight." ^ 

" Novelty is only in request ; and it is as dangerous to be 
aged in any kind of course, as it is virtuous to be constant 
in any undertaking. There is scarce truth enough alive to 
make societies secure, but security enough to make fellowship 
accursed." * 

1 2 Henry IV., V. 2. " Essay on Suspicion. 

2 Bacon's Med. Sac. * Measure for Measure. 



* Literary Style. 199 

" Extreme self-lovers will set a man's house afire to roast 
their own eggs.^ 

" I have thought that some of Nature's journeymen had 
made men, and not made them well ; they imitated humanity so 
abominably." "^ 

" Faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling 
cymbal, where there is no love." ^ 

" False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand ; hog in sloth, 
fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in 
prey." * 

" Weight in gold, iron in hardness, the whale in size, the dog 
in smell, the flame of gunpowder in rapid extension." ^ 

" Men must learn that in this theatre of man's life it is 
reserved only for God and the angels to be lookers-on."® 

" The King slept out the sobs of his subjects, until he was 
awakened with the thunderbolt of a parHament."'' 

" Or as a watch by night that course doth keep, 
And goes and comes, unwares to them that sleep." ^ 

" Or like the deadly bullet of a gun, 
His meaning struck her, ere his words begun." ^ 

" As smoke from ^tna that in fire consumes, 
Or that which from discharged cannon fumes." ^° 

" As if between them twain there was no strife. 
But that life lived in death, and death in life." ^^ 

" As a tale told which sometimes men attend. 
And sometimes not, our life steals to an end." ^ 

" As silly, jeering idiots are with kings, 
For sportive words and uttering foolish things." i° 

1 Advancement of Learning. ^ Advancement of Learning. 

^ Hamlet. "^ On Spanish Grievances. 

3 Essay on Friendship. ^ Translation of the Psalms. 

* King Lear. ^ Venus and Adonis. 

^ Novum Organum. ^"^ Lucrece. 



200 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

" For as the sun is daily new and old, 
So is my love still telling what is told." ^ 

" And so in spite of death thou dost survive, 
In that thy likeness still is left alive." ^ 

" So that with present griefs and future fears, 
Our eyes burst forth into a stream of tears." ^ 

" Thus hast thou hanged our life on brittle pins, 
To let us know it will not bear our sins." ^ 

" Like soldiers when their Captain once doth yield. 
They basely fly and dare not stay the field." ^ 

" But like a stormy day, now wind, now rain, 
Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again." ^ 

" Or as the grass which cannot term obtain, 
To see the summer come about again." * 

" Or call it Winter, which, being full of care, 
Makes Summer's welcome thrice more wish'd, more rare."^ 

For the above metrical selections we are indebted 
to the Rev. L. C. Manchester, of Lowell, Massachu- 
setts, who favors us with the following explanatory 
note : — 

" As one interested in the discussion now going on, I send 
you some couplets from Bacon's verse and some from Shake- 
speare's, having a certain likeness to each other, but differing 
from the parallelisms already noted. Possibly similar likeness 
may appear between any other two writers in the same metre ; 
if not, I do not know what these prove, unless we are to think 
that Shakespeare wrote the ' Translation of the Psalms.' That 
veracious book, ' Shakespeare's True Life,' informs us that 
Shakespeare was often Bacon's guest at Twickenham, and was 
quite ' thick ' with him. Can it be that some day, when the two 
were together, lying perhaps in the shade of those cedars pic- 
tured in the book, the player gave the Translation to the phi- 
losopher ? The work is, for the most part, as much inferior to 

1 Sonnets. ^ Venus and Adonis. 

8 Translation of the Psalms. 



Literary Style. 20 1 

Bacon's noblest poetical prose as it is to the grand verse of the 
Shakespeare drama. 

" The likeness of the stanzas in question is in the concluding 
couplets, — Bacon's being in the metre of 'Venus and Adonis.' 
It is not in sentiment or in word, but in the ending of the 
stanzas with couplets of the same kind, either developing a 
simile already introduced, or introducing a new one to com- 
plete the thought. (' Rhymes knit together and clinched by 
a couplet.' — T. Watts^ quoted by Tyler, in his edition of the 
Sonnets.) " 

Walter's 'True Life of Shakespeare,' referred to by 
Mr. Manchester, reminds us of Lucian's ' Veracious 
History;' but the author lacks the candor of the 
Greek, who announced that his book contained " not 
a single truth from beginning to end." It is a pity 
that Mr. Walter did not redeem his otherwise admi- 
rable work with a similar confession. There would 
have been, then, one truth in each. 

After all, it must be remembered that the true 
poetic spirit implies a state of being very different 
from that in which the mind is ordinarily exercised. 
The poet is a man "beside himself," — almost a 
second personality. Instances are known where the 
connection between them seemed for a time utterly 
lost to consciousness. Goethe's fine instinct sus- 
pected depths of meaning, in the second part of 
' Faust,' which he himself had not fathomed. A 
certain orator is said to have sometimes wondered, 
in the midst of his highest flights, what strange 
power had taken possession of his mental faculties. 
Thackeray often laughed aloud at some unexpected 
joke cracked under his pen. Mrs. Stowe was be- 
sought by her publishers to limit her great story to 
one volume ; she replied that the story was writing 
itself, and could not be controlled. When Trollope 



202 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

was asked why he had permitted Lily Dale to " marry 
that man," — " Confound it," was the reply, " she 
would do it ! " It is manifestly impossible rightly to 
estimate a man under a condition like this from what 
we know of him under another and totally different 
condition. We are in the same predicament with 
Archimedes, who wanted to move the earth with his 
lever, but could find no place for the fulcrum. A 
garden viewed scientifically in the light of genera 
and species, with all its plants catalogued according 
to seasons of blooming, has little to remind us of one 
in which we notice only the perfumes and hues of the 
flowers ; but the same person may be our guide in 
both. The seers of our race are those who look upon 
life with two angles of vision. 

c. Bacon's versatility appeared also in his inter- 
course with persons of various trades and occupa- 
tions in life. He had a distinct reputation among 
his contemporaries for ability to meet men on their 
own ground, and converse with them in the special 
dialects to which they were accustomed in their pur- 
suits. He was especially a complete master of the 
language of the farm. His writings are full of homely 
provincialisms, such as the following: " Money is like 
muck, not good except it be spread ; " ^ " If you leave 

1 Bacon further explained this function of money thus : — 
" When it lies in a heap, it gives but a stench ; when it is spread 
upon the ground, it is the cause of much fruit." — Apothegm. 
So we find Cominius praising Coriolanus for looking 

" Upon things precious, as they were 
The common muck of the world." 

CoriolafMS, II. 2. 

" The annotators of ' Coriolanus ' have not yet found out what 
Shakespeare meant by the ' common muck of the world.' " — R. M. 
Theobald. 



i 



• Versatility and Wit. 203 

your staddles too thick, you will never have clean un- 
derbrush ; " and many of the flowers of rhetoric with 
which his works are bestrewed strike their roots down 
into hawking and hunting. 

" I have heard him entertain a country lord in the proper 
terms relating to hawks and dogs ; and at another time outcant 
a London chirurgeon." — Francis Osboni. 

" In conversation he [Bacon] could assume the most differ- 
ent characters, and speak the language proper to each, with a 
facility that was perfectly natural, — a happy versatility of gen- 
ius which all men wish to arrive at, but which one or two only 
in an age are seen to possess." — Malleifs Life of Bacon. 

d. In another and (for our purpose) very impor- 
tant quality of mind the two authors were also con- 
spicuously alike ; they had each a wonderful faculty 
for detecting remote and subtle analogies. It is this 
that constitutes the essence of wit, and confers upon 
a writer the rare gift of enlivening, as we go along 
with him, even a worn and dusty highway with de- 
lightful vistas on either side. 

"In wit, if by wit be meant the power of perceiving analo- 
gies between things which appear to have nothing in common, 
Bacon never had an equal, not even Cowley, not even the 
author of Hudibras. . . . Occasionally it obtained the mastery 
over all his other faculties, and led him into absurdities into 
which no dull man could have fallen." — Macaulay's Essay on 
Bacon. 

" Shakespeare perceived a thousand distant and singular re- 
lations between the objects which met his view. He had the 
habit of that learned subtlety which sees and assimilates every- 
thing, and leaves no hint of resemblances unnoticed." — Prof. 
Guizot. 

e. Again, Bacon was constantly making alterations 
in his writings, even after they had gone to press. Of 



204 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

the ten essays which he pubHshed in 1597, nearly all 
were more or less changed and enlarged for the edi- 
tion of 1612. Those of 1612, including the ten before 
mentioned, were again enlarged for publication in 
1625. It seems to have been almost impossible for 
an essay to get to the types a second time without 
passing through his reforming hand, — in one in- 
stance actually losing identity in the transition. 

This was precisely the fate of the plays. Some of 
them underwent complete transformation between the 
quartos and the folio, becoming practically new com- 
positions, and, what is very singular, working away 
from the requirements of the stage into forms more 
purely artistic and literary. 

" Every change in the text of ' Hamlet ' has impaired its fit- 
ness for the stage, and increased its value for the closet in exact 
and perfect proportion. . . . Scene b)' scene, line for line, stroke 
upon stroke, and touch after touch, he went over the old ground 
again, to make it worthy of himself and his future students." — 
Swinburne. 

If there were two workshops, it is certain that one 
set of rules governed both. 

/. Bacon's sense of humor, as has already been 
shown, was phenomenal, and yet it had one curb 
which it always obeyed. 

In his ' Essay of Discourse ' he lays down the rule, 
among others, that religion should never be the butt 
of a jest. Accordingly, it is impossible to find, in all 
the wild, rollicking fun of the plays, even a flippancy 
at the expense of the Church. 

g. In the local dialect of the University of Cam- 
bridge, students do not live, but " keep," in rooms.^ 

1 Dickens's Dictionary of Oxford and Cambridge. 



• Identical Frieiids. 205 

In ' Titus Andronicus,' one of the earliest of the 
plays, written, as White suggests, when the author's 
mind was fresh from academic pursuits, we find the 
following : — 

" Knock at his study, where, they say, he keeps." 

Bacon was educated at Cambridge. 

h. The two authors had the same friends. Bacon 
and the Earl of Southampton were fellow-lodgers at 
Gray's Inn, and for many years devoted adherents 
of Essex. The " Shake-speare " poems, 'Venus and 
Adonis ' and * Lucrece,' were dedicated to South- 
ampton. The Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery 
were shareholders with Bacon in Lord Somer's ill- 
fated expedition to America ; to them was dedicated 
the first collected edition of the plays. They had 
also the same enemies. Lord Cobham was one of 
the leaders of the party opposed to Essex. Among 
his ancestors was the noble martyr, Sir John Old- 
castle, whose name the dramatist, with his usual 
deference to the established order of things, at first 
adopted for the character of Falstafif. Even after he 
had made the change, he could not forbear the fol- 
lowing sly hit at the family : — 

" Fal. And is not my host of the tavern a most sweet 
wench ? 

" Prince Hen. As the honey of Hybla, my old lord of the 
castle." — I Henry IV., I. 2. 

The head of the party to which Cobham belonged 
was Lord Burleigh. He was Bacon's uncle, but Ba- 
con had private as well as public reasons for oppos- 
ing him. Burleigh stood, like an angel with a drawn 



2o6 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

sword, directly in the path to that which Bacon cov- 
eted, — an office under the Queen. No entreaty, 
either of Bacon or of Bacon's mother, — except per- 
haps on one occasion, when he acted perfunctorily, — 
could move him. Even Anthony Bacon, who had 
spent thirteen years in France and Italy in voluntary 
service to the government without compensation, 
and who on his return home applied to Burleigh for 
some position that would enable him in a measure 
to recoup his depleted fortune, received only " fair 
words," — such words, according to his own account 
of them, as make "fools fair," but bitterly disappoint- 
ing from one who had turned the applicant's " ten 
years' harvest into his own barn without a half-penny 
charge." It was this treatment that finally drove the 
two brothers into the ranks of the opposition, and at 
one time, to our amazement, involved them in at- 
tempts to displace Burleigh, and install Essex as 
chief counsellor of the crown. 

The Lord Treasurer's conduct in this matter is 
easily accounted for without the usual imputation 
of unworthy motives : he did not appreciate his 
nephews. He saw in them, and particularly in 
Francis, qualities of mind which he deemed un- 
suited for official life. Himself a dull, plodding, 
unimaginative, thoroughly practical and conscien- 
tious statesman, he had no sympathy with any one 
who, as Essex said of Francis, was full of " poetic 
conceits." He contrived not to pay Spenser a small 
pension which the government had voted, evidently 
thinking, with Plato, that in a good commonwealth 
there is no place for a poet. 



Burleigh as Polonius. 207 

Bacon, as author of ' Hamlet,' took his revenge. 
He satirized his uncle as Polonius. What could 
represent the old minister's prolixity better than the 
following : — 

" Pol. My liege and madam, to expostulate 

What majesty should be, what duty is, 

Why day is day, night night, and time is time. 

Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. 

Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, 

And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, 

I will be brief. Your noble son is mad. 

Mad call I it ; for, to define true madness, 

What is 't but to be nothing else but mad ? 



And now remains 
That we find out the cause of this effect. 
Or rather say, the cause of this defect; 
For this effect defective comes by cause : 
Thus it remains, and the remainder thus. 
Perpend." Hamlet, II. 2. 

In early life Burleigh was offered the Secretary- 
ship by Queen Mary, with the proviso that he must 
change his religion. His answer is historic : — 

" I have been taught and am bound to serve my God first, 
and next my Queen." 

Polonius utters the same sentiment : — 

" I hold my duty as I hold my soul. 
Both to my God, one to my gracious king." 

The ten famous precepts which Lord Burleigh 
gave to his son Robert, departing for Paris, are re- 
plete with worldly wisdom ; but they are eclipsed by 
the ten still more famous ones which Polonius deliv- 



2o8 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

ered to his son Laertes, also on the eve of departure 
for Paris : — 

1 . " Give thy thoughts no tongue, 

2. Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. 

3. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar ; 

4. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, 
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel, 
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment 
Of each new-hatch'd, unpledg'd comrade. 

5. Beware 
Of entrance to a quarrel ; but, being in, 
Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee. 

6. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice ; 

7. Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. 

8. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy. 

But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy ; 
For the apparel oft proclaims the man ; 
And they in France, of the best rank and station, 
Are most select and generous, chief in that. 

9. Neither a borrower nor a lender be ; 
For loan oft loses both itself and friend. 
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. 

ID. This above all, — to thine own self be true ; 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man." 

Hamlet, I. 3. 

One of the most prominent features of Burleigh's 
administration was his reliance upon the help of spies 
and informers. For twenty years he kept a small 
army of these emissaries under his pay, hesitating at 
no espionage or treachery to gain the secrets of his 



Lord Burleigh, as Polonms. 209 

enemies. "They were a vile band," says a recent 
writer in the Dictionary of National Biography, "the 
employment of which could not but bring some 
measure of dishonor upon their employer. Hence 
the shame and indelible reproach which attach them- 
selves to Cecil's conduct of affairs, and which not all 
the difficulties of his position or the unexampled 
provocations which he endured can altogether ex- 
cuse." He even forced Bishop Parker to take the 
confessions of a prisoner whom torture could not 
affect, in the disguise of a Catholic priest. 

It is to this conspicuous trait in Burleigh's char- 
acter that we owe the following exquisite scene: — 

''Enter Polonius and Reynaldo. 

Pol. Give him tliis money, and these notes, Reynaldo. 

Rey. I will, my lord. 

Pol. You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo, 
Before you visit him, to make inquiry 
Of his behaviour. 

Rey. My lord, I did intend it. 

Pol. Marry, well said ; very well said. Look you, sir, 
Inquire me first what Danksters are in Paris : 
And how, and who ; what means, and where they keep ; 
What company, at what expense ; and finding. 
By this encompassment and drift of question, 
That they do know my son, come you more nearer 
Than your particular demands will touch it. 
Take you, as 't were, some distant knowledge of him ; 
As thus, — ' I know his father, and his friends, 
And, in part, him ; ' — do you mark this, Reynaldo ? 

Rey. Ay, very well, my lord. 

Pol. 'And, in part, him; but,' you may say, 'not well ; 
But, if 't be he I mean, he 's very wild, 
Addicted so and so ; ' and there put on him 
What forgeries you please ; marry, none so rank 

14 



2IO Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

As may dishonor him ; take heed of that ; 

But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips 

As are companions noted and most known 

To youth and liberty. 
Rey. As gaming, my lord. 

Pol. Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling, 

Drabbing ; — you may go so far. 
Rey. My lord, that would dishonor him. 
Pol. 'Faith, no ; as you may season it in the charge. 

You must not put another scandal on him, 

That he is open to incontinency ; 

That 's not my meaning ; but breathe his faults so 
quaintly. 

That they may seem the taints of liberty ; 

The flash and out-break of a fierce mind ; 

A savageness in unreclaimed blood. 

Of general assault. 
Rey. But, good my lord, — 

Pol. Wherefore should you do this ? 
Rey. Ay, my lord, 

I would know that. 
Pol. Marry, sir, here 's my drift ; 

And, I believe, it is a fetch of warrant. 

You, laying these slight sullies on my son, 

As 'twere a thing a little soil'd i' th' working, 

Mark you, 

Your party in converse, him you would sound. 

Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes 

The youth you breathe of guilty, be assur'd, 

He closes with you in this consequence : 

' Good sir,' or so ; or ' friend,' or ' gentleman,' — 

According to the phrase, or the addition, 

Of man and country. 
Rey. Very good, my lord. 

Pol. And then, sir, does he this, — he does — 

What was I about to say? [By the Mass] I was 

About to say something: where did I leave? 
Rey. At ' closes in the consequence,' 

As ' friend or so,' and 'gentleman.' 



* Lord Burleigh, as Polonius. 2 1 1 

Pol. At ' closes in the consequence,' — ay, marry. 

He closes with you thus ; — 'I know the gentleman ; 

I saw him yesterday, or t' other day. 

Or there, or then ; with such or such ; and, as you say, 

There he was gaming ; there o'ertook in 's rouse ; 

There falling out at tennis ; or perchance, 

' I saw him enter such a house of sale ' — 

Videlicet^ a brothel, — or so forth. — 

See you now; 

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth, 

And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, 

With windlaces, and with assays of bias, 

By indirections find directions out. 

So by my former lecture and advice, 

Shall you my son. You have me, have you not.'' 
Rey. My lord, I have. 

Pol. God b' wi' you ; fare you well. 

Rey. Good my lord. 

Pol. Observe his inclination in yourself. 
Rey. I shall, my lord. 
Pol. And let him ply his music. 
Rey. Well, my lord. {Exit.'' 

An intelligent writer in ' Notes and Queries ' (Jan- 
uary 31, 1863) declares that "Polonius is not so 
much a satire as a portrait of Lord Burleigh." He 
adds innocently, " Shakespeare may have had some 
prejudices against this celebrated minister." Con- 
sidering the relations that existed between Francis 
Bacon and his cousin Robert Cecil, and the well- 
known character of the latter, we doubt whether any- 
thing more comical than the foregoing scene in 
'Hamlet' can be found in the whole range of 
English literature. 

Bacon's most implacable enemy, however, was Sir 
Edward Coke. The two were constant rivals for the 



212 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

favor of the court and for the highest honors of 
the profession to which they belonged. They were 
rivals, too, for the hand of Lady Hatton, the beauti- 
ful widow, who finally waived the eight objections 
which her friends urged against Coke (his seven 
children and himself), and gave him the preference. 
At one time the contention became so personal and 
bitter that Bacon appealed to the government for 
help. 

In ' Twelfth Night,' we find the following portrait- 
ure of Coke, drawn by no friendly hand : — 

" Sir Toby. Taunt him with the license of ink ; if thou 
thou'st him thrice,^ it shall not be amiss; and as many lies as 
will lie in thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big 
enough for the Bed of Ware in England, set 'em down." — 

III. 2. 

" Coke was exhibited on the stage in ' Twelfth Night ' for his 
ill usage of Raleigh." — DisraelTs Curiosities of Literature, 
II. 531- 

/. The philosopher and the dramatist were at one, 
also, in the ease and frequency, not to say unscrupu- 
lousness, with which they appropriated to their own 
use the writings of others. Bacon's audacity in this 
respect is unequalled in all the world's literature, 
unless we except " Shake-speare." Both authors lit 
their torches, as Rawley says of Bacon, " at every 
man's candles." 

j. Bacon's home was at St. Albans, on the river 
Ver, especially interesting as the site of the ancient 

1 A reference to Coke's brutal speech at the trial of Sir Walter 
Raleigh, in which occur these words : " Thou viper ! for I thou thee, 
thou traitor!" Theobald (1733) cites the passage as a proof of 
" Shake-speare's " detestation of Coke. 



Puns. 2 1 3 

city of Verulamium. Among the local traditions of 
the place, verified by old coins found in the soil, is 
one respecting a king named Cymbeline, who reigned 
there in the early part of the Christian era, and who 
had intimate relations with Rome. The story of 
Cymbeline furnished some of the incidents, even to 
minute particulars, of the Shakespearean play that 
bears his name. 

k. Bacon was very fond of puns. He not only 
handed down to posterity numerous specimens found 
in his reading, but he immortalized some of his own 
in the Apothegms. The Spanish Ambassador, a Jew, 
happening to leave England Easter morning, paid 
his parting respects to Bacon, wishing him a good 
Easter. Bacon replied, wishing his friend a good 
pass-over. The plays also abound in this species of 
wit. A remarkable instance may be quoted from the 
' Merry Wives of Windsor,' thus : — 

" Evans. Accusaiivo, king, Jiangs hog, 

" Quick. Hang hog is Latin for Bacon, I warrant you." — 
IV. I. 

This refers to a pun perpetrated by Sir Nicholas 
Bacon, father of Francis. One day a culprit, named 
Hog, appealed to Judge Bacon's mercy on the ground 
that they were of the same family. " Aye," replied 
the Judge, *' but you and I cannot be kindred except 
you be hanged ; for hog is not bacon until it be well 
hanged." 

The appearance of this family pun in the plays is 
significant.^ 

^ " Bacon was fond, also, of speaking of his great contemporaries, 
of quoting their wit and recording their sayings. In his apothegms 



214 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

I. Bacon's prose works overflow with citations 
from classical literature. They are filled to satura- 
tion with ancient lore. This is true also of the plays. 
They make us breathe the very air of Greece and 
Rome. The following is only a partial list of the 
classical authors, the influence of whose writings has 
been traced in them : Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Sopho- 
cles, Euripides, ^Eschylus, Lucian, Galen, Ovid, Lu- 
cretius, Tacitus, Horace, Virgil, Plutarch, Seneca, 
Catullus, Livy, and Plautus, all of whom were known 
to Bacon. A curious instance is the following: — 

" Thy promises are like Adonis' gardens, 
That one day bloomed and fruitful were the next." 

I Henry VI., I. 6. 

This reference puzzled all the commentators for 
nearly three hundred years, — Richard Grant White 
declaring that *' no mention of any such gardens in 
the classic writings of Greece or Rome is known to 
scholars." It has recently been found, however, in 
Plato's ' Phoedrus,' — a work that had not been trans- 
lated into English in Shakespeare's time. 

" It is the ease and naturalness with which the classical allu- 
sions are introduced to which it is the most important that we 

we find nearly all that is known of Raleigh's power of repartee. How 
came such a gatherer of wit, humors, and characters to ignore the 
greatest man living ? Had he a reason for this omission ? It were 
idle to assume that Bacon failed to see the greatness of Lear and 
Macbeth."— The (London) AthencEitm, Sept. 13, 1856. 

" Although Bacon quotes nearly every great writer in his works, 
he never quoted Shakespeare. Is it for the same reason that the 
author of the ' Waverley Novels ' used, as quotations for the headings 
of his chapters, passages from every poet but Scott ? " — George 
Stronach, in Bacon Jonrtial, i886. 



Continental Travel. 215 

should attend. They are not purple patches sewed on to a piece 
of plain homespun ; they are inwoven in the web. 

" He [Farmer] leaves us at full liberty, for anything he has 
advanced, to regard Shakespeare as having had a mind richly 
furnished witTi the mythology and history of the times of an- 
tiquity, an intimate and inwrought acquaintance, such as per- 
haps few profound scholars possess." — Hunter. 

"What kind of culture Shakespeare had is uncertain; how 
much he had is disputed; that he had as much as he wanted, 
and of whatever kind he wanted, must be clear to whoever con- 
siders the question. Dr. Farmer has proved, in his entertaining 
essay,! \X^2lX. he got everything at second-hand from translations, 
and that where his translator blundered he loyally blundered 
too. But Goethe, the man of widest acquirement in modern 
times, did precisely the same thing." — LowelPs Among My 
Books., p. 188. 

ni. Bacon spent several years in study and travel 
on the Continent; it is said that he was meditating a 
tour in the East when the sudden death of his father 
called him home. Internal evidences make it almost 
absolutely certain that the author of the plays ac- 
quired his exact knowledge of Italian scenes and 
customs from actual residence in Italy. 

" The most striking difficulty lies, perhaps, in the descriptions 
of foreign scenes, particularly of Italian scenes, — descriptions 
so numerous and so marvellously accurate that it is almost im- 
possible to believe that they were written by a man who lived 
in London and Stratford, who never left this island, and who 
saw the world only from a stroller's booth." — The {Londoji) 
AthencEutn, Sept. 13, 1886. 

" It cannot be denied that Shakespeare, in the ' Merchant of 
Venice,' has carefully observed and wonderfully hit the local 

1 In three papers, marked by his well-known learning and literary 
power, Dr. Maginn pierced the pedantic and inflated essay of Farmer 
into hopeless collapse." — Prof. Baynes, Frazer''s Magazine, 1879. 



2i6 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

coloring. There lies over this drama an inimitable and decid- 
edly Italian atmosphere. Everything in it is so faithful, so 
fresh, and so true to nature, that in this respect the play cannot 
possibly be excelled. 

" Portia sends her servant to Padua to fetch certain ' notes 
and garments,' and then meet her at the ' common ferry ' trad- 
ing to Venice. If Shakespeare had taken the ride himself be- 
fore describing it, as Sir Walter Scott took that from Loch 
Vennachar to Stirling, described in the ' Lady of the Lake,' 
the statements could not agree better. 

" The ferry takes us across the ' Laguna Morta,' and up the 
great canal to the city, where we in spirit land at the Rialto. 
Shakespeare displays no less accurate knowledge of this locality 
than of the villas along the Brenta, as he does not confound 
the Isola di Rialto with the Ponte di Rialto. He knows that the 
'exchange where merchants most do congregate' is upon the 
former." — Elze's Essays on Shakespeare, p. 278. 

" ' This night, methinks, is but the daylight sick ; 
It looks a little paler; 't is a day 
Such as the day is when the sun is hid.' 

merchant of Venice, V. r. 

" The light of the moon and stars [in Italy] is almost as yel- 
low as the sunlight in England. . . . Two hours after sunset, 
on the night of the full moon, we have seen so far over the 
lagunes that the night seemed only a paler day, — 'a little 
paler.' " — Charles Knight. 

A correspondent of the ' Baltimore Sun ' writing 
under date of August 16, 1895, at Rome, says: — 

" It seems natural that the Italians should give attention to 
the Shakespearean drama. Much of it has been taken from 
Italian sources. I am inclined to think that no less than two- 
thirds of the plays of Shakespeare are derived, in a more or less 
direct form, from Italian sources, — either renaissance Italian 
or ancient Roman. But not only will the student of Shake- 
speare discover this prominence in the works of the great poet, 



Continental Travel. 217 

but the close searcher into the byways of Italian literature will 
discover that not only are the plots taken from Italy, but in 
several cases the very words are translations, more or less faith- 
ful, from Italian authors of mediocre fame. 

" There is no doubt that the Enghsh poet knew Italy well, and 
with an observant, intimate knowledge of not only the outward 
aspects of the places and people, but also an intuitive knowledge 
which enabled him to penetrate, as it were, into their hearts 
and minds, and show them forth on the stage verily 'in their 
habit as they lived.' It is George Augustus Sala, himself the 
descendant of a Roman family of ancient lineage, who point- 
edly refers to this quality of Shakespeare's knowledge of Italy. 
In his ' Life and Adventures,' pubHshed a few months ago, 
Mr. Sala writes: 'Wandering from Milan to Mantua, and from 
Padua to Verona and Vicenza, there grew up in me day after 
day a stronger and stronger impression — an impression which 
has become an unalterable conviction — that Shakespeare knew 
every rood of ground and every building in the cities in which 
he had laid the scenes of the " Merchant of Venice," " The Two 
Gentlemen of Verona," of "Romeo and Juliet," and of "The 
Taming of the Shrew." Few tourists who have visited North- 
ern Italy have escaped being pestered by ciceroni, who have 
offered to show them the tomb of Juliet at Verona, the shop of 
the apothecary at Mantua, and the Palazzo del Moro (the resi- 
dence of Othello) on the Grand Canal at Venice. But it was 
the constant study of ostensibly petty details in Shakespeare's 
Italian plays that led me to the full and fast belief that he was 
familiar, from actual experience and observation, with the 
Northern Italy of his time.' 

" To one who resides constantly in Italy, and is gifted with 
observation, the truth of this is most convincing and evident. 
A short time ago I visited the cities which are the chief scenes 
of his more prominent Italian plays, — Venice, Verona, Padua, 
Mantua. It was simply surprising to note how marvellously the 
view of the place, carefully studied, threw light on the play for 
which it furnished the scene. Shakespeare was evidently of the 
opinion of Proteus, in 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' 'that 
home-keeping youths have ever homely wits,' and undoubtedly he 



2i8 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

did extend his travel beyond the space which lies between Lon- 
don and Stratford-upon-Avon. I have not to account for the 
time in which this continental tour was accomplished, — that is 
the task of the biographer; but the intimate knowledge of Ital- 
ian towns, manners, and customs cannot intelligently and satis- 
factorily be accounted for otherwise." 

Professor Elze gives us, also, some curious informa- 
tion regarding " Shake-speare's " knowledge of Italian 
art, — knowledge that could have been derived, it 
would seem, only from personal inspection on the 
spot. For instance, in the ' Winter's Tale,' " Shake- 
speare " tells us that the statue of Hermione was the 
work of Giulio Romano ; he dwells upon the merits 
of it, and of Romano's artistic qualities as a sculptor, 
with discriminating and enthusiastic praise. 

" There is, perhaps, no description of statuary extant so ad- 
mirable for its truth and beauty." — Greeti's Shakespeare and 
the Emblefn Writers, p. loS. 

But who ever heard, until recently, that Romano 
was a sculptor? Certainly not the Shakespearean 
critics, for they have almost universally assumed that 
this great master in the art of painting, Raphael's 
favorite pupil and successor, simply colored in this 
case the work of another artist. Such coloring was 
then, indeed, quite in vogue. Shakspere's bust at 
Stratford was treated in this manner, and continued 
so — with red lips, brown eyes, and auburn hair — 
until Mr. Malone, himself a learned critic, employed 
a common house-painter to cover it with a coat of 
white paint. Other critics, such as the editor of the 
'Saturday Review' and Mr. Andrew Lang, charac- 



Statue of Hermione. 219 

terize this reference to Romano as one of " Shake- 
speare's " blunders.-^ 

It happens, however, that Vasari, who pubHshed 
in 1550 a work on Itahan art, and who was a con- 
temporary and personal acquaintance of Romano, 
states distinctly that Romano was not only a painter, 
but an architect and sculptor also. The statement 
appears in a Latin epitaph given in the book. Vasari 
revised and enlarged his work for a second edition 
in 1568, but, curiously enough, omitted the epitaph. 
The first edition (which was, of course, in Italian) 
was never translated into a foreign tongue. It was 
the second edition only that became known, through 
translations, outside of Italy. " We now stand," says 
Professor Elze, "before this dilemma": Either the 
author of the plays had read, when he wrote the 
' Winter's Tale,' a copy of Vasari in the first edition 
(one that had long been supplanted by another, and 
that has not been translated to this day), and found 
what nobody else found for nearly three hundred 
years afterwards, or he had been in Mantua and seen 
Romano's works. 

It is hardly necessary to add that every effort to 
find the slightest hint of foreign travel in the life of 
Shakspere, though made with great persistence, has 
thus far signally failed. 

n. Bacon's paramount aspiration was to possess 
and impart wisdom. He was indefatigable in his 
search for it, analyzing motives, and turning the light 

1 "The egregious blunder of calling him a sculptor." — Saturday 
Review. 

For Mr. Lang's assumption to the same effect, see ' Harper's 
Monthly,' April, 1894, art. ' Winter's Tale.' 



2 20 Bacon vs. Skakspere. 

of his genius upon the most hidden springs of con- 
duct. Nothing was too remote or recondite for his 
use. It was inevitable, then, that his mind should 
fall easily and naturally into those channels of thought 
which the " wit of one and the wisdom of many " have 
worn deep in human experience. The Promus fairly 
sparkles with proverbs. Nearly every known language 
appears to have been ransacked for them. From the 
Promus they were poured copiously into the plays. 
Mrs. Pott finds nearly two thousand instances in which 
they beautify and enrich these wonderful works. 

" In Bacon's works we find a multitude of moral sayings and 
maxims of experience from which the most striking mottoes 
might be drawn for every play of Shakespeare, — aye, for every 
one of his principal characters, . . . testifying to a remarkable 
harmony in their mutual comprehension of human nature." — 
Gerviniis. 

" As a student of human nature Bacon is hardly yet appre- 
ciated ; his beneficent spirit and rich imagination lend sweetness 
and beauty to the homeliest practical wisdom. 

" As well as he thought he understood [physical] nature, he 
understood human nature far better. 

" Not the abstract quahties and powers of the human mind, 
but the combination of these into concrete character, interested 
Bacon. He regarded the machinery in motion ; the human 
being as he thinks, feels, and moves ; men in their relations with 
men." ^ — E. P. Whipple. 

" The study of mankind occupied the largest part of his 
time." — Prof. Mitito's Manual of English Prose Con7position, 
p. 243. 

" The original ten essays contain almost nothing but maxims 
of prudence." — Ibid. 

" The main study of his life was how to ' work ' men." — 
Ibid.^ p. 254. 

" He was more eminently the philosopher of human than of 
general nature." — Hallam. 

1 How exactly this characterization fits " Shake-speare " also 1 





/ ■ ¥^% 




Queen Elizabeth. 



Court Etiquette. 223 

0. Bacon's whole life was passed in the atmosphere 
of the Court. At the age of ten he was patted on 
the head by Queen Elizabeth, and called her " young 
lord keeper." When sixteen he went to Paris in the 
suite of the British ambassador, and lived three years 
in that gay capital and its vicinity, studying not only 
the arts of diplomacy, but all the penetralia of Court 
life. On his return he was freely admitted to the 
presence of royalty, was the friend of princes, and, 
filling the highest offices in the gift of the king, was 
elevated to the peerage. It is not surprising, there- 
fore, that the plays, almost without exception, have 
their movement in the highest circles of society. 
The common people are kept in the background, 
and are referred to in terms, often bordering on con- 
tempt, that show the author to have been a man of 
rank. It is certain that he was familiar with Court 
etiquette, even to the nicest details. 

" Shakespeare despised the million, and Bacon feared, with 
Phocion, the applause of the multitude." — Gervinus. 

" He [Shakespeare] was a constitutional aristocrat." — 
Applet ott Morgan. 

" Men of birth and quahty will leave the practice [of duelling] 
when it comes so low as barbers, surgeons, butchers, and such 
base mechanical persons." — Bacon. 
^ " The ignorant and rude multitude." — Ibid. 

" The rude multitude ; the base vulgar." — Shakespeare. 

p. Bacon was continually hiding his personality 
under disguises. One of the first acts of his public 
career was to invent a cipher for letter-writing. He 
even invented a cipher within a cipher, so that if the 
first should by any chance be disclosed, the other, 
imbedded in it, would escape detection. At one 



224 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

time he carried on a fictitious correspondence, in- 
tended for the eye of the queen, between his brother 
Anthony and the Earl of Essex, composing the let- 
ters on both sides, and referring to himself in the 
third person. He published one of his philosophical 
works under a pseudonym, and another as though it 
were the wisdom of the ancients stored in fables. 
In Sonnet LXXVI. we find the following: — 

" Why write I still all one, ever the same. 
And keep invention in a noted weed, 
That every word doth almost tell my name, 

Showing their birth and whence they did proceed ? " 

Here is a plain statement that the author of this 
sonnet was writing under a disguise. 

The same remarkable admission appears in Bacon's 
prayer : — 

" The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been 
precious in mine eyes ; I have hated all cruelty and hardness of 
heart; I have, though in a despised weed, sought the good of 
all men." 

The word weed signifies garment ; particularly, as 
both Bacon and " Shake-speare " use it, one that dis- 
guises the wearer.^ It will be noted that this confession 

^ " Luc. But in what habit will you go along ? 
Jul. Not like a woman. . . . 

Gentle Lucetta, fit me with such weeds 
As may beseem some well-reputed page." 

Two Gentlemen of Verona, II. 7. 

" This fellow . . . clad himself like a hermit, and in that weed 
wandered about the country, until he was discovered and taken." — 
Bacon's History 0/ Henry VII. 



Philosophy. 225 

reveals at once Bacon's views of the drama (already 
quoted) as a means of promoting public virtue, those 
of the people around him (who despised itj, and his 
incognito. 

q. Early in life, Bacon determined to make all 
knowledge his province. He became fired with this 
ambition at college, when he discovered that the 
authority of Aristotle, then supreme over the minds 
of men, was based on erroneous postulates. Accord- 
ingly he resolved, single-handed, to demolish the 
whole structure of philosophy as it then existed, and 
at least to indicate the methods by which it should 
be rebuilt. To accomplish this, he knew he must 
compass all the knowledge of his time, as the great 
Stagirite had done before him. How well and faith- 
fully he fulfilled his task, let the gratitude and venera- 
tion of mankind make answer. Among the names 
of the five most illustrious men of all the world. 
Bacon's has a place, and that place at or near the 
head. 

Of the various arts and sciences into which he 
pushed his investigations, we may specify the fol- 
lowing : — 

Philosophy. — Bacon has been called the father of 
inductive philosophy, because he, more than any 
other, taught the natural method of searching for 
truth. Before his time, men had conceived certain 
principles to be true, and from them had reasoned 
down to facts. The consequence was that facts be- 
came more or less warped to fit theories, and the 
discovery of new facts out of harmony with the 
theories a matter of regret and even of condemna- 

15 



2 26 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

tion. Under this system, obviously, the world could 
make but slow progress. 

Bacon started at the other end. The cast of his 
mind was distinctively synthetical. His choice of the 
inductive method for his investigations, a process 
from the particular to the general and from the gen- 
eral to the universal, shows the direction of his intel- 
lectual fibre. In this he simply obeyed a law of his 
being, as a carpenter drives his plane with the grain 
of the wood.^ He had no knowledge of mathematics, 
a science almost purely analytic.^ He discarded the 
syllogism, because it opens with a broad assumption 
and reasons downward. On the other hand, he had 
an ability, as we have already stated, to detect analo- 
gies and to combine, never surpassed, perhaps never 
equalled, among the children of men. In a word, his 
mind was phenomenally comprehensive, able to pro- 
ject a vast temple of science in which every depart- 
ment should have its appropriate space, but not to 
excavate to solid rock on which to lay the founda- 
tions and erect the structure. Even at this distance 
of time we are amazed at the mass of materials 
gathered together by this intellectual giant from all 
quarters, and lying about in great promiscuous heaps 
on the ground where he toiled. 

Bacon's eminence as a philosopher is one of the 
interesting paradoxes of our time. On one point 

1 " With a synthetic power rarely equalled, Bacon was an indiffer- 
ent analyst ; his care was not to part and prove, but to announce and 
harmonize." — NichoFs Francis Bacon, Part II. p. 194. 

2 He " was not only entirely unacquainted with geometry and 
algebra, but evidently insensible even of their value or their use." — 
Craik's English Literature and Language, II. 143. 



• Philosophy. 227 

only are all agreed, viz., that he is a resplendent orb 
in the light of which, across an interval of three cen- 
turies, every man still casts a shadow. His brightness 
prevents a clear definition of his disk. No two critics 
agree as to the nature or cause of the profound im- 
pression he has made on mankind. Their comments 
remind us of the inscription on a monument in 
Athens, " To THE UNKNOWN God." ^ 

Bacon himself was full of contradictions. He often 
violated his own precepts. He declared he was only 
" ringing a bell " for others, and yet he took no 
notice of those who, as it were, obeyed his summons. 
He sneered at Copernicus, and at the theory of the 
solar system with which that illustrious name is linked 
forever. He betrayed no sympathy with Galileo. 
He turned a deaf ear to Harvey, the discoverer of 
the circulation of the blood ; to Gilbert, who first 
proclaimed the earth a magnet ; to Napier, the inven- 
tor of logarithms ; and to Kepler, whose formula of 
planetary laws imparts dignity to human nature itself. 
All these, with the exception of Copernicus, were his 
contemporaries, illustrating his own favorite methods 
and adding glory before his face to his own glorious 
age. Any estimate of Bacon into which these facts 
do not fit is utterly worthless. 

Various notable attempts have been made to ex- 
plain this anomaly. According to Baron Liebig, 
Bacon was an impostor ; this is the Explanation 
Brutal. According to Spedding, he had a wonder- 

1 " There is something about him not fully understood or discerned, 
which, in spite of all curtailment of his claims in regard to one 
special kind of eminence or another, still leaves the sense of his 
eminence as strong as ever." — Craik's English Literature and Lan- 
guage, I. 613. 



228 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

ful talent for detecting resemblances, but none at all 
for distinguishing differences ; this is the Explanation 
Nonsensical. Dr. Draper in his ' Science and Re- 
ligion ' comes nearer the truth ; he holds that Bacon's 
entire system of philosophy is " fanciful." 

The only rational and consistent view is this : 
Bacon was, first, a poet; secondly, a philosopher. 
Over and above his other faculties towered the cre- 
ative, — that which gave eloquence to his tongue, 
splendor to his style, and an exhaustless illumination 
to his whole being. If he sometimes failed to dis- 
cern a truth close at hand in the practical affairs 
of life, he was like the angels before the Throne, 
hiding their eyes under their wings. 

" A similar combination of different mental powers was at 
work in them ; as Shakespeare was often philosophical in his 
profoundness, Bacon was not seldom surprised into the imagina- 
tion of the poet." — Gervinus. 

"If we look carefully into the matter, it is not on the pre- 
scribed method of Bacon that his fame was built. It was the 
power of divination in the man which made him great and in- 
fluential. ... He was very near discovering the law of the 
correlation of forces." ^ — Ingleby^s Essays, p. 182. 

" His services lay not so much in what he did himself, as in 
the grand impulse he gave to others." — Prof. Mmto's English 
Prose Compositiott, p. 239. 

" No man would go to Bacon's works to learn any particular 
science or art, any more than he would go to a twelve-inch 
globe in order to find his way from Kennington turnpike to 

1 History is full of instances of this same poetic divination. Ten 
years before Darwin's 'Origin of Species' appeared, Emerson 
wrote : — 

" And striving to be man, the worm 
Mounts through all the spires of form." 



History. 229 

Clapham Common. The art which Bacon taught was the art 
of inventing arts." — Macaulafs Essay on Bacon. 

" The glance with which he surveyed the intellectual universe 
resembled that which the archangel from the golden threshold 
of heaven darted down into the new creation." — Ibid. 

" II se saisit tellement de I'imagination, qu'il force la raison 
k s'incliner, et il les dblouit autant qu'il les ^claire." — M. Re- 
tnusat : Bacon, sa vie, son temps, sa philosophie, et son influ- 
ence. Paris : 1857. 

" Truly it may be said both of Bacon and of Shakespeare, 
that equally they never argue; they decree." — O'Connor's 
Hamlet's Note-Book, p. 60. 

"He was a seer, a poet, rather than a natural philosopher," 
— R. M. Theobald. 

" Some of Bacon's suggested experiments on Hght might 
well be supposed to have been borrowed from Newton ; and the 
results at which he arrived in the investigation of heat, he sets 
forth in language not greatly differing from that which in 
modern times describes heat as a mode of motion." — Baron 
Liebig, Macmillan's Mag., 1S63. 

" Bacon was the prophet of things that Newton revealed." — 
Horace Walpole. 

" The change is great when in fifty years we pass from the 
poetical science of Bacon to the mathematical and precise 
science of Newton." — Church's Life of Bacon, p. 181. 

" The Novum Organum is a string of aphorisms, a collec- 
tion, as it were, of scientific decrees, as of an oracle who fore- 
sees the future and reveals the truth. ... It is intuition, 
not reasoning." — Taine's History of Etiglish Literattire, 
I. 154. 

History. — Historical literature had a special charm 
for Bacon. His history of the reign of Henry VH. 
is an English classic; his portraiture of Julius Caesar, 
an epitome of one of the world's most interesting 
and important epochs. 

Shakespeare's mind ran in the same channels. 
Nearly half the plays are historical, and they deal 



230 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

with those periods to which Bacon gave particular 
attention, the EngHsh Henries and the career of 
Rome. 

" ' Where have you learned the history of England ? ' it was 
asked of the greatest statesman of the last century. Lord 
Chatham replied, 'In the plays of Shakespeare.'" — Dean 
Stanley. 

" The marvellous accuracy, the real, substantial learning of 
the three Roman plays of Shakespeare, present the most com- 
plete evidence to our minds that they were the result of a pro- 
found study of the whole range of Roman history." — Knight. 

" Where, even in Plutarch's pages, are the aristocratic repub- 
lican tone and the tough muscularity of mind, which character- 
ized the Romans, so embodied as in Shakespeare's Roman 
plays? Where, even in Homer's song, the subtle wisdom of 
the crafty Ulysses, the sullen selfishness and conscious martial 
might of broad Achilles, the blundering courage of thick-headed 
Ajax, or the mingled gallantry and foppery of Paris, so vividly 
portrayed as in ' Troilus and Cressida ' ? " — Richard Grant 
White. 

"Delicate and subtle distinctions are made between the 
manners of different epochs of Roman history. For instance, 
the language, turn of thought, and local coloring in ' Coriolanus,' 
'Antony,' and 'Julius Caesar' are exquisitely and profoundly 
Roman ; yet the reader is conscious that the Romans in 
' Coriolanus ' are as different from the Romans of the other two 
plays as was the Roman people at the two different epochs in 
question. . . . We have here the very essence and soul of clas- 
sicism, and we have, too, what the ancients have not given us, 
the household and private physiognomy of their times." — 
Sha'w''s English Literature^ p. 121. 

Law. — Bacon began the study of law at nineteen, 
several years before the appearance of the first of the 
Shakespeare plays. His mastery of the subject was 
prompt and thorough. At fifty he was the leading 
jurist of the age. 



• Law. 231 

The use of legal terms in the plays, always in their 
exact significance, and sometimes showing profound 
insight into the principles on which they rest, has 
long excited the wonder of the world. On this point 
we have already given the opinion of Chief Justice 
Campbell ; we will add the testimony of Richard 
Grant White, a witness also on the other side, and 
now speaking as it were under cross-examination, as 
follows : — 

" No dramatist of the time, not even Beaumont, who was a 
younger son of a judge of the Common Pleas, and who, after 
studying in the inns of court, abandoned law for the drama, 
used legal phrases with Shakespeare's readiness and exactness. 
And the significance of this fact is heightened by another, that 
it is only to the language of the law that he exhibits this inclina- 
tion. The phrases peculiar to other occupations serve him on 
rare occasions, generally when something in the scene suggests 
them ; but legal phrases flow from his pen as part of his vocab- 
ulary and parcel of his thought. . . . And besides, Shakespeare 
uses his law just as freely in his early plays, written in his first 
London years, as in those produced at a later period. Just as 
exactly, too ; for the correctness and propriety with which these 
terms are introduced have compelled the admiration of a chief 
justice and a lord chancellor." 

The conclusion is well-nigh irresistible that a 
trained lawyer was the author of the plays. ^ The 

1 " The notion that he was an attorney's clerk is blown to pieces." 
— Richard Grant White. 

"The worst of it is, for the theory of his having been an attorney's 
clerk, that it will not account for his insight into law; his knowledge 
is not office sweepings, but ripe fruits, mature, as though he had 
spent his life in their growth." — Gerald Massey. 

" It is demonstrated that he [Shakespeare] was no attorne3''s 
clerk, as Lord Campbell believed, but a ripe, learned, and profound 
lawyer, so saturated with precedents that at once in his highest and 



232 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

only possible escape from it is through Portia's 
unprecedented rulings in the trial scene in * The 
Merchant of Venice ; ' as though a beautiful damsel, 
sitting as judge on the bench, and in love with one 
of the parties interested in the suit, were expected 
to follow legal precedents ! 

It is not necessary, however, to poise this argu- 
ment on a jest. Thanks to Mr. John T. Doyle, a 
complete explanation of these seemingly anomalous 
proceedings is easily given. That is to say, the 
trial was in exact accordance with the rules of pro- 
cedure that formerly obtained in the courts of Spain, 
and, it may fairly be presumed, also in those of 
Venice. 

In 1852-53 Mr. Doyle resided in Nicaragua, once 
a Spanish colony, and still under the sway of Spanish 
customs, and there, as agent of a trading company, 
became involved in considerable litigation. The 
account which he gives of the course pursued in one 
of his causes, and substantially in them all, is ex- 
tremely interesting, particularly in view of the light 
thrown by it on the case Shy lock vs. Antonio. 

First, the judge ascertained the facts in the usual 
way, by questioning the parties to the suit, and ex- 
sweetest flights he colors everything with legal dyes." — Appleton 
Morgan. 

" Genius would not here guide without technical lore. . . . Are 
the devotees of Shakespeare resolved to make him a miracle ? " — 
Prof. Francis W. N'ewmart. 

A writer in ' Baconiana ' (London, November, 1S93) shows with ad- 
mirable clearness and force that out of two hundred and fifty points 
of law treated in the plays, two hundred and one of them are stated 
with more or less fulness in Bacon's legal tracts, published by 
Spedding, and easily accessible to any student. 



Shy lock vs. Antonio. 233 

amining the witnesses; then, takuig the case under 
advisement, he continued it to another day. In due 
time the parties were again cahed together and a 
written statement of the matters in controversy was 
submitted to them by the judge, who, with their con- 
currence, immediately appointed a certain person, of 
high reputation for capacity and legal attainments, to 
act as referee. This person, who happened to live in 
a distant city, submitted his opinion in writing, as the 
final decision of the court. Subsequently a gratifi- 
cation in his behalf was demanded of the successful 
suitor, Mr. Doyle's comments on the case are so 
clever that we present them entire : — 

" With this experience, I read the case of Shylock over 
again, and understood it better. It was plain that the sort of 
procedure Shakespeare had in view, and attributed to the Vene- 
tian court, was exactly that of my recent experience. The trial 
scene in the ' Merchant of Venice ' opens on the day appointed 
for final judgment ; the facts had been ascertained at a previous 
session, and Bellario had been selected, as the jurist, to deter- 
mine the law applicable to them. The case had been submitted 
to him in writing, and the court was awaiting his decision. The 
defendant, when the case is called, answers, as is done daily in 
our own courts, ' Ready, so please your Grace.' Shylock, the 
plaintiff, is not present. In an English, or any common-law 
court, his absence would have resulted in a nonsuit, but not so 
here ; he is sent for, just as my adversary was, and comes. 
After an ineffectual attempt to move him to mercy, the Duke 
intimates an adjournment, unless Bellario comes. And it is 
then announced that a messenger from him is in attendance; 
his letter is read, and Portia is introduced. Bellario's letter 
excuses his non-attendance on a plea of illness, and proposes 
her, under the name of Balthasar, as a substitute. ' I acquainted 
him [he writes] with the cause in controversy between the Jew 
and Antonio, the merchant ; we turned o'er many books to- 



234 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

gether ; he is furnished with my opinion, which, bettered with 
his own learning, the greatness whereof I cannot enough com- 
mend, comes with liim at my importunity to fill up your Grace's 
request in my stead. ... I leave him to your acceptance, whose 
trial shall better publish his commendation.' The Duke, of 
course, had the right, so far as concerned himself, to accept the 
substitution of Balthasar for Bellario; but Shylock, I take it, 
would have had his right to challenge the substitute, and per- 
haps it is to avoid this, by disarming his suspicions, that all 
Portia's utterances in the case, until she has secured his express 
consent to her acting, are favorable to him. Thus, — 

' Of a strange nature is the suit you follow, 
Yet in such rule that the Venetian law 
Cannot impugn you as you do proceed ; ' 

and again, after her splendid plea for mercy, — 

' I have spoken thus much, 
To mitigate the justice of thy plea, 
Which, if thou follow, this strict Court of Venice 
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant here.' 

" Shylock would have been mad to object to a judge whose 
intimations were so clearly in his favor. He first pronounces 
her 'A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel!' This does 
not, however, amount to an express acceptance of her as a sub- 
stitute; it is but an expression of high respect, consistent with 
a refusal to consent to the proposed substitution. She carries 
the deception still farther, pronounces the bond forfeit, and 
that — 

' Lawfully, by this the Jew may claim 
A pound of flesh, to be by him cut off 
Nearest the merchant's heart,' 

and again pleads for mercy. 

" The poor Jew, completely entrapped, then ' charges her by 
the law to proceed to judgment.' Antonio does the same, and, 
both parties having thus in open court accepted her as such, 
she is fairly installed as the judex substitiitus for Bellario, and 



Shy lock vs. Antonio. 235 

almost immediately afterwards suggests the quibble over the drop 
of blood and the exact pound of flesh on which Antonio escapes. 
" To complete the parallel to my Nicaraguan experience, 
above recounted, we find, after the trial is over, and the poor, 
discomfited Jew has retired from the court, the Duke says to the 
defendant, whose life has been saved by Portia's subtlety, — 

' Antonio, gratify this gentleman, 
For, in my mind, you are much bound to him.' 

That is, give him a 'gratification,' or honorarium; and Bas- 
sanio offers her the three thousand ducats which were the 
condition of the bond." ^ 

Mr. Doyle also finds, in a Mexican case, a prece- 
dent for the action of the Venetian court in fining 
Shylock. He then adds : — 

" It seems to me that Shakespeare was acquainted (however 
he acquired the knowledge) with the modes of procedure in 
tribunals administering the law of Spain, as well as with those 
of his own country ; if like practice did not obtain in Venice, or 
if he knew nothing of Venetian law, there was no great improb- 
ability in assuming it to resemble that of Spain, considering 
that both were inherited from a common source, and that the 
Spanish monarchs had so long exercised dominion in Italy." 

Bacon's residence in France and in Southern Eu- 
rope for several years sufficiently accounts for the 
special knowledge shown by " Shake-speare " in the 
conduct of this case. 

Medicine. — Upon the theory and practice of medi- 
cine, Bacon lavished at times all his powers. The 
study seems to have had a special fascination for 
him. He was puddering in physic, he says, all his 
life. He even kept an apothecary among his per- 

^* Skakespeartana, lo, 57. 



236 Bacon vs. S/iakspere. 

sonal retainers, seldom retiring to bed without a 
dose. 

Physicians tell us that the writer of the plays was 
a medical expert. Dr. Bucknill has written a book 
of three hundred pages, and Dr. Chesney one of two 
hundred, to prove this. We know that the names of 
Galen and Paracelsus roll from the tongues of the 
drainatis pcrsoncs like household words. Bacon's 
mother was afflicted in the latter part of her life with 
insanity. The portrayal of that dreaded disease in 
' Hamlet ' and ' King Lear ' is to this day a psycho- 
logical marvel.^ 

" We confess, almost with shame, that, although nearly two 
centuries and a half have passed since Shakespeare wrote ' King 
Lear,' we have very little to add to his method of treating the 
insane, as there pointed out." — Dr. Brighani. 

" Diseases of the nervous system seem to have been a 
favorite study, especially insanity." — B. Rush Fielcfs Medkal 
Thoughts of Shakespeare, p. 13, 2d ed. 

" That abnormal states of mind were the favorite study of 
Shakespeare would be evident from the mere numbers of char- 

1 It has been conjectured that Shakespeare derived his knowledge 
of medical science from his son-in-law, Mr. Hall, who was a physician. 
This is negatived by two considerations, viz. : i. Hall married Susanna 
Shakespeare in 1607, twenty years after the plays began to appear, 
and long after those were written in which this specialty is most dis- 
played. 2. His professional attainments were of too low a character 
to sustain such an inference. Fortunately, we have his memorandum 
book, in which he noted down his most important cases, and the 
methods of treatment he applied to them. Conspicuous among his 
remedies are powdered human skull and human fat, tonics of earth 
worms and snails, solution of goose excrements, frog-spawn water, 
and swallows' nests, — straw, sticks, dung, and all. 

This was in the days when country practitioners advised people, 
on the ground of health, to wash their faces but once a week, and to 
dry them only on scarlet cloth. 



Natural History, 237 

acters to which he has attributed them. On no other subject 
has he written so much ; on no other has he written with 
such mighty power." — Buckniirs Psychology of Shakespeare, 
p. vii. 

Natural History. — No department of science was 
more thoroughly explored by Bacon than natural 
history. If he had anticipated a general deluge of 
ignorance, he could not have gathered into an ark a 
more complete menagerie than the one we find in 
his * Sylva Sylvarum ' and other works. Nearly every 
living species, the name and habits of which had 
been given in books, is represented there. 

In one other author alone, not professedly tech- 
nical, do we find equally copious references to ani- 
mals and plants. That author is " Shake-speare." 
The books that have been written to show his knowl- 
edge on this subject are very numerous. We have 
one by Harting, on the Ornithology of " Shake- 
speare ; " another by Phipson, on his Animal Lore; 
three by Ellacombe, Beisly, and Grindon, on his 
Plant Lore ; and an elaborate treatise by Patterson, 
on the insects mentioned in the plays. 

The resemblance between the two goes further; it 
exists not only in the multiplicity of these references, 
but in the character of them also. 

Bacon was born in London ; he passed the most of 
his days in the city, or in its immediate suburbs. We 
have no reason to believe that he was especially fond 
of country life, or that he studied nature personally 
in the fields and woods. His love of garden plants, 
however, as already shown, was deep and tender; he 
wanted some of them in bloom about him all the 
year round. He likened their perfume to the war- 



238 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

bling of birds. He once accepted an invitation to 
make a social visit, with the remark that he would be 
delighted to pluck violets in his friend's garden. In 
the science of horticulture, therefore, no one could 
be more thoroughly at home than Francis Bacon, 
or possess a knowledge much more minute and 
accurate. 

On the other hand, for what he wrote on the great 
world of nature beyond the precincts of his garden, 
on trees and shrubs, on birds and fish and undomes- 
ticated animals generally, he was obliged to go to 
the shelves of his library. He went to Aristotle's 
' Problems,' to Pliny's * Natural History,' to Sandys' 
'Travels,' to Scaliger's ' De Subtilitate,' to Porta's 
' Magic,' and to several others. He viewed each of 
these works as a collection, and accordingly he 
called his own, in which they were all to some de- 
gree incorporated, ' Sylva Sylvarum, or Collection of 
Collections.' Rawley tells us that he himself foraged 
through all this literature for the facts which Bacon 
recorded. 

The dependence on books was so absolute that, 
though no mention is made by Bacon of Sandys or 
of Sandys' travels, we know almost exactly what 
countries the latter visited, and even the order in 
which he visited them, from what is contained in the 
' Sylva Sylvarum.' 

Under these circumstances one result was inevi- 
table. Allowing for the full exercise of Bacon's sci- 
entific intuition, we must still expect to find, as Baron 
Liebig has found, numerous errors in the text. The 
stream never rises higher than the source, and the 



Natural History. 239 

source in this case was fact and fiction inextricably 
mixed. 

It is startling to find the same line of demarcation 
between the knowledge of horticulture and the knowl- 
edge of the great world of physical nature outside of 
horticulture, and the same indifference to charges of 
plagiarism, in " Shake-speare " precisely as in Bacon. 
What " Shake-speare " has written about garden- 
plants is accurate to the minutest details. He is 
here evidently on his own ground, giving the results 
of his own observations, and spreading over them the 
glow of his personal feelings. 

In the domain of animated nature at large, how- 
ever, we encounter a different state of things. Over 
every kind of wild animal, including birds and insects 
mentioned in the plays, with one curious exception, 
our literary Jupiter nods; but he nods so gracefully 
as to deceive even the very elect of the critics. 
Thanks to an intelligent writer in the ' Quarterly,' 
we now know to what books he went for his facts, 
and how and why he blundered. 

"He borrows from Gower and Chaucer and Spenser ; from 
Drayton and Du Bartas and Lyly and William Browne ; from 
Pliny, Ovid, Virgil, and the Bible ; borrows, in fact, every- 
where he can, but with a symmetry that makes his natural his- 
tory harmonious as a whole, and a judgment that keeps it 
always moderate and possible."— 2?mr/6'r/F Review, April, 
1894. 

Take the description, for instance, of the ideal 
horse in * Venus and Adonis ; ' it is borrowed, almost 
word for word, from Du Bartas. Here are all of 
" Shake-speare's " phrases as they occur in that fa- 



240 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

mous description, and, in brackets, those of the 
original, as given in the 'Quarterly': — 

" Round hoofed [round hoof] ; short jointed [short pasterns] ; 
broad breasts [broad breast] ; full eye [full eye] ; small head 
[head but of middle size]: nostrils wide [nostril wide]; high 
crest [crested neck, bowed] ; straight legs [hart-like legs] ; and 
passing strong [strong] ; thin mane [thin mane]; thick tail [full 
tail] ; broad buttock [fair, fat buttocks] ; tender hide [smooth 
hide]." 

Now take an illustration among the birds. The 
lark seems to have been a favorite with the author 
of the plays. The allusions are as follows : — 

"The 'morning lark' (so in Lyly) ; the 'mounting lark' 
(William Browne) : the 'merr}- lark' (Spenser) ; ' herald of the 
morning ' (Chaucer) ; ' shrill lark ' (Spenser) ; ' summer's bird ' 
(Spenser) ; the 'busy day, waked by the lark' ('the busy lark, 
waker of the day,' Chester) ; 

' Hark ! hark ! the lark at heaven's gate sings, 
And Phoebus 'gins arise,' 
(' At Heaven's gate she claps her wings. 

The morn not waking till she sings.' — Zy/)/)." 

The writer in the 'Quarterly' accepts the tradi- 
tional Shakspere, but he cannot avoid expressing a 
certain disappointment (in which he has our entire 
sympathy) as follows : — 

" Shakespeare was curiously unobservant of animated Nature. 
. . . He seems to have seen very little. . . . Stratford-on-Avon 
was, in his day, enmeshed in streams, yet he has not a single 
kingfisher. Not on all his streams or pools is there an otter, a 
water-rat, a fish rising, a dragon-fly, a moor-hen, or a heron. 
. , . To the living objects about him he seems to have been 
obstinately purblind and half-deaf. His boyhood was passed 
among the woods, and yet in all the woods in his plays there is 
neither woodpecker nor wood-pigeon ; we never hear or see a 
squirrel in the trees, nor a night-jar hawking over the bracken." 



Natural History. 241 

The plain answer to this is, of course, that the 
author of the plays never Hved in Stratford ; he was 
not a countryman ; he never roamed through the 
woods, or fished in the streams. On the contrary, 
he passed his boyhood in a city, where language was 
free from patois ; his youth, in a university, from 
which he poured the classics into his earliest plays; 
and his manhood, in courts of law and royalty, with 
the manners, customs, and learning of which he was 
so thoroughly familiar. 

We are now prepared to understand why " Shake- 
speare " made so many errors in his descriptions of 
animals, — he looked at them, contrary to Dryden's 
dictum, through the " spectacles of books." For 
example : — 

" We '11 follow where thou lead'st, 
Like stinging bees in hottest summer's day, 
Led by their master to the flower'd fields." 

Titus Andronzcus, V. i. 

" The passage is of course ridiculous, but it is taken from 
Du Bartas." — Quarterly. 

Again : — 

" Our thighs packed with wax, our mouths with honey, 
We bring it to the hive." 

2 Henry /V., IV. 4. 

" Bees do not carry wax on their thighs but in their tails ; 
and honey, not in their mouths, but in their stomachs. How- 
ever, the line is borrowed from Lyly's ' Euphues,' " — Quar- 
terly. 

Again,— 



242 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

"■ The old bees die, the young possess their hive." 

" Of anything else in the world this might be true, but said of 
the bee it is a monumental error, the most compendious mis- 
statement possible. There are no generations of bees ; they 
are all the offspring of the same mother; and they possess the 
hive by mutual arrangement, and not by hereditary succession ; 
for when it gets too full, the superfluous tenth goes off with a 
queen bee to the colonies." — Quarterly. 

The most elaborate description of a bee-hive and 
its inmates in " Shake-speare " is given in 'Henry 
V.,' as follows : — 

" For so work the honey-bees. 
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach 
The act of order to a peopled kingdom ; 
They have a king and officers of sorts ; 
Where some, like magistrates correct at home, 
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad, 
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings. 
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds ; 
Which pillage they with merry march bring home 
To the tent-royal of their emperor ; 
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys 
The singing masons building roofs of gold, 
The civil citizens kneading up the honey, 
The poor mechanic porters crowding in 
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate. 
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum, 
Delivering o'er to the executors pale 
The lazy yawning drone." — I. 2. 

On this the writer in the ' Quarterly ' com- 
ments : — 

" As poetry, it is a most beautiful passage ; as a description 
of a hive, it is utter nonsense, with an error of fact in every line, 
and instinct throughout with a total misconception of the great 



Natural History. 243 

bee-parable. Obviously, therefore, there could have been no 
personal observation. How, then, did the poet arrive at the 
beautiful image? From the ' Euphues ' of Lyly." 

On the same authority it appears that what 
" Shake-speare " says of the cuckoo comprises " two 
proverbs, two misstatements, and the completest 
possible misconception of the cuckoo idea in na- 
ture ; " and of the weasel, " two proverbs and two 
misstatements." " Shake-speare" seems to have been 
very fond of the dove, and to have some accurate 
knowledge of it ; but it is the domesticated dove 
which he describes, such as had its habitat at Gor- 
hambury and Twickenham Park, and not its congener 
in the woods. 

To all this, however, we find one significant excep- 
tion, — the author of the plays describes with accu- 
racy and, what is more remarkable still, with perfect 
sympathy, the animals of the chase. 

" With the boar, the hare, and the deer the facts are re- 
versed. Whether Shakespeare ever saw a boar-hunt is a mat- 
ter for conjecture, but he gives a superb description of the 
animal and its chase in ' Venus and Adonis.' ... It is very 
noteworthy as an illustration of the poet's treatment of a real 
animal in which he felt an actual personal interest. Take again 
in the same poem the exquisite description of a hunted hare, 
and note the force and beauty which the lines derive from his 
accuracy and sympathy. He had observed what he there de- 
scribed, and the result is such a poem as to make other poets 
despair. 

" Or what can be said that is too appreciative of Shake- 
speare's deer ? He was here perfectly at home, and thoroughly 
familiar from personal observation with the haunts and habits 
of the animal he was describing. The result is a detailed and 
most beautifully accurate history of the deer, whether stag, hart, 



244 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

or hind, buck, or doe. Above all, it is marked, as in the case 
of the hare, with a most touching sympathy for the hunted 
beast." — Quarterly. 

Bacon was thoroughly famihar with hunting and 
hawking, as, indeed, was every one at that time in his 
station of hfe ; and if we may judge from his tem- 
perament and the state of his health, sympathy with 
the hunted animal must have been a predominant 
feeling with him. This is the kind of exception that 
proves a rule. 

Religion. — The Bacon family was Catholic under 
Mary, and Protestant under Elizabeth ; as a conse- 
quence, Francis had no strong predilections in favor 
of either sect. In religion as in philosophy, he ab- 
horred sects, and sought only what was universal. 
The sincerity of his faith in an overruling Providence 
we have no reason to doubt, though his own state- 
ment that " a little philosophy inclineth man's mind 
to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's 
minds about to religion," may have been, intention- 
ally or unintentionally, autobiographical, indicating 
some laxity of opinions on this subject in the early 
part of his life. The anxieties and constant admoni- 
tions of his mother, culminating in the dethronement 
of her reason, as w^ell as the subsequent battles of 
religious controversialists over his status, would seem 
to justify this inference.* 

' According to Evelyn and Aubrev, Bacon was the true founder of 
the Royal Society. He inspired it with his own cosmopolitan spirit 
against the religious passions of the age so effectually that when, a 
hundred years afterwards, the Society for the Promotion of Christian 
Knowledge wished simply to meet in its rooms, the request was re- 
fused. . . . Bacon's name has been found in a list of rejected candi- 



Religion. 245 

"He was in power at the time of tlie Synod of Dort, and 
must for months have been deafened with talk about election, 
reprobation, and final perseverance. Yet we do not remember 
a line in his works from which it can be inferred that he was 
either a Calvinist or an Arminian." — Macatilay. 

>' From his exhaustive enumeration of the branches of human 
knowledge Bacon excluded theology, and theology alone." — 
Greene's Short History of England, p. 596. 

Shakespeare's religion was also an anomaly. Sev- 
eral books have been written on it, but they might 
well have been compressed into the dimensions of 
Horrebow's famous chapter on reptiles in Iceland. 
Some infer, from his toleration amid the fierce resent- 
ments of his time, that he was a Catholic ; others, 
from the defiance hurled at the Pope in ' King John,' 
and from the panegyric on Cranmer in ' Henry VIII.,' 
that he was a Protestant; while others still, finding 
no consolations from belief in a future life in the 
plays, proclaim him an infidel. Indeed, pious com- 
mentators always approach this subject walking back- 
ward and holding a mantle before them. They know 
instinctively that the great poet was also a great 
philosopher, building solidly on human reason, and 
from the summit of his magnificent structures allow- 
ing not even a vine to shoot upward. 

" In his great tragedies he traces the workings of noble 
or lovely human characters on to the point, and no further, 
where they disappear in the darkness of death ; and ends with a 
lonV back, never on toward anything beyond." — E. B. West: 
Broivniftg as a Preacher. 

dates for admission to membership in the Academy of Florence, an 
institution founded for the cultivation of the physical sciences. M. 
de Remusat assigns the rejection to theological grounds. 



246 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

" No church can claim him." — Richard Graiit White. 

" Both have an equal hatred of sects and parties : Bacon, of 
sophists and dogmatic philosophers ; Shakespeare, of Puritans 
and zealots. . . . Just as Bacon banished religion from science, 
so did Shakespeare from art. ... In both, this has been 
equally misconstrued, Le Maistre proving Bacon's lack of 
Christianity, as Birch has done that of Shakespeare." — Ger- 
vinus. 

Poetry. — Bacon defined poetry as " feigned his- 
tory; " that is to say, history not according to actual 
occurrences which seldom satisfy the moral sense, 
but of a higher order, so written as to exhibit in one 
picture the natural and in the end inevitable results 
of a given line of conduct. The office of the true 
poet is thus to bring to virtue its reward, and to vice 
its punishment within certain time limits, and on the 
grandest scale to which his genius can attain. It is 
to grind at once what the mills of God grind slowly. 
This was Bacon's favorite idea, illustrated also in his 
definition of Art compared with Nature. Art, he said, 
is superior to Nature, but superior to it only while 
obedient to its rules. Architecture may be " frozen 
music," but it must be in harmony with what Bacon 
calls the " nature of things," to make melody in our 
souls. 

It is impossible to conceive of compositions more 
faithful to this dramatic ideal than the plays of 
" Shake-speare." The very anachronisms in them 
emphasize the distinction between poetry and his- 
tory; and the plays always meet the ends of justice, 
for they are always true to the fundamental principles 
of our nature. 



Music. 247 

" Nature is made better by no mean, 
But Nature makes that mean ; so, over that art. 
Which, you say, adds to Nature, is an art 
That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry 
A gentler scion to the wildest stock ; 
And make conceive a bark of baser kind 
By bud of nobler race. This is an art 
Which does mend nature." 

Winter'' s Tale., IV. 3. 

" His contemporary, Bacon, gave to poetry this great voca- 
tion; as the world of the senses is of lower value than the 
human soul, so poetry must grant to men what history denies ; 
it must satisfy the mind . . . with a more perfect order and a 
juster relation of things than are to be found there. Shake- 
speare appears to have held the same views." — Gervinus' Co?n., 
II. 549. 

The plays are " the most consummate style of the art that 
mends nature." — Holmes' Authorship of Shakespeare., p. 200. 

"In one short but beautiful paragraph concerning poetry, 
Bacon has exhausted everything that philosophy and good 
sense have yet had to offer on what has been since called the 
Beau Ideal." — Dugald Stewart. 

Music. — Both authors took great delight in music. 
Bacon devoted a long chapter of his ' Natural His- 
tory ' to the consideration of sounds and the laws of 
melody. In the plays we find nothing sweeter than 
the strains that " creep in our ears " as we read 
them. 

" Lord Bacon has given a great variety of experiments, 
touching music, that show him to have been not barely a phi- 
losopher, an inquirer into the phenomena of sound, but a master 
of the science of harmony, and very intimately acquainted with 
the precepts of musical composition." — Sir yoh7i Hawkins. 

" Shakespeare seems to have been proficient in the art." — 
Richard Grant White. 



248 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

" He [Shakespeare] seems also to have possessed, in an un- 
usual degree, the power of judging and understanding the theory 
of music, — that upon which the performance and execution of 
music depends. In the 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' (I. i), 
where the heroine of the play is conversing with her maid, 
there is a passage which enters so fully into the manner of how 
a song should be sung, that it seems to have been inserted in- 
tentionally to exhibit the young poet's knowledge in this branch 
of art. And Burney draws attention to the fact that the critic 
who, in the scene referred to, is teaching Lucetta Julia's song, 
makes use of no expressions but such as were employed by 
the English, as termini technici in the profession of music." — 
Ulrici. 

One of the points upon which Bacon expended 
much thought was the harmonic relations of the tones 
composing the modern diatonic scale. The interval 
of the perfect fourth, which comprises two major 
seconds and a minor second, he carefully analyzed, 
reaching a conclusion which has been frequently 
cited in treatises on the subject. Concerning this 
interval he writes, that " after every three whole 
notes [tones] nature requireth for all harmonical use 
one half note [tone] to be interposed." Thus, for 
instance, from C to F, which comprises a perfect 
fourth, we have three whole tones, C, D, and E, fol- 
lowed by a semitone, F. The augmentation of this 
interval, by sharpening the F, so as to give an inter- 
val of three full tones, was not permissible in Bacon's 
day, and he sought to base the prohibition on a nat- 
ural law. 

Again Bacon writes : " For discords, the second 
and seventh are of all others the most odious in har- 
mony to the sense ; whereof the one is next above the 
unison, the other next under the diapason, which may 



• Music. 249 

shew that harmony requireth a competent distance of 
notes." Here is evidence of his perfect famiharity 
with a technical question ; is it possible that Shake- 
speare also possessed the same abstruse knowledge? 
We quote from ' King Lear ' : — 

" Oh, these eclipses portend these divisions ! — fa, sol, la, 
mi." — I. 2. 

" In Shakespeare's time, and until a comparatively recent date, 
the syllables for solmization, instead of do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, 
were fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la, mi ; " so that ' fa, sol, la, mi ' covered 
the interval of an augmented fourth, " ending upon the seventh 
or leading note of the scale, which, unless followed by the tonic, 
or used for some very special effect, is a most distracting figure 
based upon the most poignant of discords." — Richard Grant 
White. 

" Shakespeare shows by the context that he was well ac- 
quainted with the property of these syllables in solmization, 
which imply a series of sounds so unnatural that ancient musi- 
cians prohibited their use. The monkish writers on music say, 
mi contra fa est diabolus. The interval, fa mi, including a tri- 
tonus or sharp 4th, consisting of three tones without the inter- 
vention of a semitone (expressed in the modern scale by the 
letters F G A B), would form a musical phrase extremely dis- 
agreeable to the ear. Edmund, speaking of eclipses as portents 
and prodigies, compares the dislocation of events, the times 
being out of joint, to the unnatural and offensive sounds, /Jz, sol, 
la, mi.'''' — Dr. Burney. 

Oratory. — Bacon was a natural orator. Ben Jon- 
son says of him : — 

" There happened in my time one noble speaker who was 
full of gravity in his speaking. ... His hearers could not 
cough, or look aside from him without loss. He commanded 
where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his 
will. No man had their affections more in his power. The 
fear of every man who heard him was lest he should make an 
end." 



250 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

Another contemporary pronounced him " the elo- 
quentest man that was born in this island." 

Turning to the plays, we find there the most won- 
derful speech that ever passed, or was supposed to 
pass, human lips. In power of sarcasm, in pathos, 
in sublimity of utterance, and, above all, in rhetorical 
subtlety, Mark Antony's oration over the body of 
Caesar has no equal in forensic literature. 

" Every line of this speech deserves an eulogium; . . , nei- 
ther Demosthenes, nor Cicero, nor their glorious rival, the im- 
mortal Chatham, ever made a better." — Sherlock. 

" The first of dramatists, he might easily have been the first 
of orators." — Archbishop Whately. 

Printi7ig. — Bacon's knowledge of the printer's art 
extended to the minutest details. His first book was 
published when he was twenty-four, but under so 
heavy a title, ' The Greatest Birth of Time,' that it 
sank at once into the sea of oblivion. The mysteries 
of the craft, however, finally became very familiar to 
him. In the ' Novum Organum ' he announced his 
intention of writing a treatise on the subject, going 
so far as to include ink, pens, paper, parchment, and 
seals in his prospectus for it. 

The encyclopedic " Shake-speare " was also at 
home in the composing and press rooms. " He 
could not have been more so," says Dr. Appleton 
Morgan, " if he had passed his days as a journeyman 
printer." 

" A small type, called nonpareil^ was introduced in English 
printing-houses from Holland about the year 1560, and became 
admired and preferred beyond the others in common use. It 
seems to have become a favorite with Shakespeare, who calls 
many of his lady characters ' nonpareils.' " — Morgan. 



Art of Printing. 251 

" What printer is there who has put to press the second edi- 
tion of a book, working page for page in a smaller type and 
shorter measure, but will recognize the typographer's remi- 
niscences in the following description of Leontes' babe by 
Pauline : — 

' Behold, my lords, 
Although the print be little, the whole matter 
And copy of the father : . . . 
The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger.' 

Winter's Tale, II. 3. 

Is it conceivable that a sentence of four lines, containing five 
distinct typographical words, three of which are especially 
technical, could have proceeded from the brain of one not inti- 
mately acquainted with typography ? " — Blades' Shakespeare 
and Typography ^ p. 42. 

Astrology. — In common with most of his contem- 
poraries, Bacon had a hngering behef in astrology. 
So had the author of the plays. The planets are 
" good," " favorable," " lucky," or " ill-boding," " an- 
gry," and " malignant," according to their position at 
the moment of one's birth. 

Navigation. — Among the subjects investigated by 
Bacon, that which surprises us most to find is, per- 
haps, the art of navigation. He went into it so thor- 
oughly, however, that in his ' History of the Winds' 
he gives us the details of the rigging of a ship, as 
well as the mode of sailing her. 

We are still more astonished — or should be if we 
were not prepared for it — to find that " Shake- 
speare " had the same unusual knowledge. He not 
only " knows the ropes," but he knows exactly what 
to do on shipboard in a storm. Even the dialect of 
the forecastle is familiar to him. 



252 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

" Of all negative facts in regard to his [Shakespeare's] life, 
none perhaps is surer than that he never was at sea." — 
Richard Grant White. 

" Shakespeare's seamanship during the tempest in the first 
scene [of the Tempest] is beyond criticism. No order of the 
Boatswain is superfluous; no order is omitted that skill can 
suggest to save the craft. Turn to Dryden, where, amidst a 
wild and incoherent mass of nautical nonsense, orders are issued 
which, if obeyed, would drive the ship straight to destruction." 
Fumes s'' Varionu/i^ IX. 

Heraldry. — In the ' De Augmentis,' Bacon defines 
an emblem as a " sensible image," — one that " strikes 
the memory more forcibly, and is more readily im- 
pressed upon it than an object of the intellect." He 
includes the emblematic art in the list of those sub- 
jects that seemed to him to require careful investiga- 
tion. That he was especially fond of studies of this 
nature is evident throughout his works. Fables with 
esoteric meanings, symbolical pictures, cipher writ- 
ings, anything occult or cabalistic, strongly appealed 
to his imagination. The frontispiece of the ' Novum 
Organum' is a ship under full canvas, passing between 
the pillars of Hercules in search of a new world of 
science. A picture of the winged Pegasus adorns 
another of his books. His Essays bear the title, ' In- 
teriora Rerum,' or the Interior of Things. Indeed, a 
cloud of mystery envelops nearly all his first editions, 
to the despair of the uninitiated, from that day to this. 
He named his whole system of philosophy, 'The Res- 
toration,' because he thought there had once been an 
' Age of Reason,' the records of which are now lost, 
and that nothing is needed for its recovery but a 
combined effort on the part of mankind to repossess 
Nature's secrets. In his view, Plato and Aristotle 



'^-^^ ' W^ ^ T'^T^ 



/ .3 




Heraldry. 255 

are among the lighter objects that have floated down 
to us on the stream of Time, — the heavier and more 
valuable having sunk before they reached us. 

Of " Shake-speare's " familiarity with the works of 
the emblematists we have abundant proofs. That he 
had read, in 1593, Whitney's 'Choice of Emblems,' 
an English publication of 1586, the following paral- 
lelism may indicate : — 

FROM DEDICATION OF 'CHOICE FROM DEDICATION OF 'VENUS 
OF emblems' TO EARL OF AND ADONIS ' TO EARL OF 

LEICESTER. SOUTHAMPTON. 

" Being abashed that my " I leave it to your honor- 

habihty can not afford them able survey, and your Honour 

such as are fit to be offered up to your heart's content; only if 

to so honorable a survey ; yet, your Honour seem but pleased, 

if it shall like your honor to I account myself highly praised, 

allow of any of them, I shall and vow to take advantage of 

think my pen set to the book all idle hours till I have hon- 

in happy hour ; and it shall en- oured you with some graver 

courage me to assay some mat- labour." 
ter of more moment, as soon 
as leisure will furnish my de- 
sire in that behalf." 

In the triumph scene of ' Pericles ' six knights 
successively cross the stage. The author thus de- 
scribes their armorial bearings: — 

" Sim. Who is the first that doth prefer himself? 
Thai. A knight of Sparta, my renowned father ; 
And the device he bears upon his shield 
Is a black Ethiope reaching at the sun; 
The word, ' Lux tua vita mihi.' " 

This motto, says Green, in his ' Shakespeare and 
the Emblem Writers ' (to whom we are indebted for 
much curious and valuable information on this sub- 
ject), is almost identical with that of the Blount fam- 



256 



Bacoji vs. Shakspcre. 



\\\, several members of which are introduced to us 
in the plays. The origin of the device itself — " a 
black Ethiope reaching at the sun " — is unknown. 

" Sim. Who is the second that presents himself ? 
Thai. A prince of Macedon, my royal father; 
And the de\-ice he bears upon the shield 
Is an arm'd knight that 's conquered by a lady ; 
The motto thus, in Spanish, ' Piu por duizura que por 
fuerza. ' " 

Aloderata vis zmpotenti violentia potior. 







fr^-L:.is, 1575- 

The motto means " ^^lore by gentleness than by 
force," and, though here given in Spanish, has been 
found only in a French work, " of extreme rarity " 
(as Green says), Corrozet's * Hecatomgraphie,' Paris, 
1540. There it reads, "plus par doulceur que par 



• Heraldry. 257 

force," and is illustrated in the original work with a 
wood-cut, representing the well-known fabled contest 
between the Wind and the Sun over a traveller's cloak. 

We know that this fable subsequently became very 
popular on the Continent, for we find it again in 
Freitag's Latin work, ' Mythologia Ethica.' 

Freitag's work in Latin came from the press in 
Antwerp in 1579, the year that terminated Bacon's 
sojourn in France. 

*' Sim. And what 's the third ? 
Thai. The third of Antioch 

And his device, a wreath of chivalrj' ; 
The word, ' Me pompee provexit apex.' '' 

Me pompae prouexit apex. 




Pa-rndin, 1562. 



The laurel-wreath, which this knight wore embla- 
zoned on his shield, and the words, meaning, " The 
crown of triumph has impelled me on," are given, 
precisely as Shakespeare has represented them, in 

17 



258 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



Paradin's ' Devises Heroiques,' published in French 
in Antwerp in 1562. The accompanying cut (p. 257) 
is taken from that work. 

" Sbn. What is the fourth ? 
Thai. A burning torch that 's turned upside down ; 
The word, ' Quod me alit, me extinguit.' " 

For this, the author of ' Pericles ' went to Syme- 
oni's French work, ' Tetrastichi Morali ' (1561), or to 
Whitney's translation of it, in both of which the de- 
vice is represented as follows : — 

S I GNOR DI S. 
VALI E R. 




SyTneoni, 1561 [diminished cafy). 

Symeoni's explanation of the device is in these 
words : — 



Heraldry. 



259 



" In the battle of the Swiss, routed near Milan by King 
Francis, M. de Saint-Valier bore a standard whereon was 
painted a lighted torch with the head downward, on which 
flowed so much wax as would extinguish it, with this motto, 
' Qui me alit, me extinguit.' It is the nature of the wax, which 
is the cause of the torch burning when held upright, that with 
the head downward it should be extinguished. Thus he wished 
to signify that, as the beauty of the lady whom he loved 
nourished all his thoughts, so she put him in peril of his life." 

'* Thai. The fifth, a hand environed with clouds. 

Holding out gold that 's by the touchstone tried, 
The motto thus, ' Sic spectanda fides.' " 




Crispin de I'asse, about 15951 

We find this device, with the motto, " So is fideHty 
to be proved," in Paradin, who thus explains it: — 



26o 



Baco7i vs. Shakspere. 



" If in order to prove fine gold or other metals, we bring 
them to the touch, without trusting to their glitter or their 
sound, so to recognize good people and persons of virtue it is 
needful to observe the splendor of their deeds, not words." 

Several of the kings of France adopted this device 
for their escutcheons. 

" Shn. And what 's 

The sixth and last, the which the knight himself 
With such a graceful courtesy deliver'd ? 
Thai. He seems to be a stranger ; but his present is 
A withered branch, that 's only green at top ; 
The motto, ' In hac spe vivo.' " 




ParaJin, 1562. 

Concerning this, Mr. Douce in his ' Illustrations of 
Shakespeare ' comments as follows : — 

"The sixth device, from its peculiar reference to the situa- 
tion of Pericles, may perhaps have been altered from one in 
Paradin, used by Diana of Poictiers. It is a green branch 



Witchcraft. 261 

springing from a tomb, with the motto, ' Sola vivit in illo,' — 
Alone on that she lives." 

Mr. Green, however, thinks that " Shake-speare " 
invented for himself the sixth knight's device and its 
motto, " In hac spe vivo." He adds : — 

•' The step from applying so suitably the emblems of other 
writers to the construction of new ones would not be great ; and 
from what he has actually done in the invention of emblems 
in the ' Merchant of Venice,' he would experience very little 
trouble in contriving any emblem he needed for the completion 
of his dramatic plans. The Casket Scene [in the ' Merchant of 
Venice '] and the Triumph Scene [in ' Pericles '], then, justify 
our conclusion that the correspondencies between Shake-speare 
and the Emblem writers which preceded him are very direct 
and complete. It is to be accepted as a fact, that he was ac- 
quainted with their works, and profited so much from them as 
to be able, whenever the occasion demanded, to invent, and 
most fittingly illustrate, devices of his own.'' — p. 1S5. 

It is evident that the author of ' Pericles ' had made 
a thorough study of heraldry. If he wrote the play 
previously to 1586, as he probably did (Dryden says 
it was his first), he acquired his knowledge of the 
subject from Latin, French, and Italian sources. In 
either event, we must recognize his easy familiarity 
with the literature of courts. 

Witchcraft. — Bacon believed in witchcraft, but at 
the same time deprecated the ease with which judges 
and juries accepted the confessions — " recent con- 
fessions," as he called them — of the poor deluded 
creatures on trial for their lives. He treated the 
subject in the 'Advancement of Learning' (1605), 
and in the ' Sylva Sylvarum.' Among the most 
conspicuous instances of the kind to which he al- 



262 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

ludes were those investigated by Dr. Harsnet, and 
made public by him in a book entitled ' Declaration 
of Egregious Popish Impostures ' in 1603. 

That the author of 'King Lear' (1606) went to 
this same book for information on witchcraft is per- 
fectly well known. The same extraordinary devils 
are introduced to us in both of these works under 
the following names : — 

FROM HARSXET'S 'DECLA- 
RATION.' FROM 'KING LEAR.' 

Fliberdigibet Flibbertigibbet 

Hoberdidance Hobbididance 

Haberdicut Obidicut 

Flateretto Flateretto 

Smolkin Smolkin 

Modu Modo 

Maho Mahu 

Passages in the text of ' King Lear ' can also be 
traced to Harsnet, particularly Edgar's references to 
knives and halters (articles that played an important 
part in the proceedings at Denham), and the charac- 
ter of the seven devils mentioned, each of which rep- 
resented a deadly sin in human nature. The likeness 
extends in one case even to the curling of the hair. 
Indeed, Mr. Spalding, in his ' Elizabethan Demon- 
ology,' is enabled from this source to correct a line 
in the drama, ordinarily rendered, 

" Pur! the cat is gray" (III. 6), 

by showing that Purre was one of the fiends that 
figured at the trial, and was compared to a cat, as 
others were compared to hogs, wolves, dogs, and 
lions. 



Freemasonry. 263 

" Hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in 
madness, lion in prey." — III. 4. 

" A comparison of the passages in ' King Lear,' spoken by 
Edgar when feigning madness, with those given by Harsnet, 
will show that Shakespeare has accurately given the contempo- 
rary belief on the subject. Mr. Spalding also considers that 
nearly all the allusions in 'King Lear' refer to a youth known 
as Richard Mainey, — a minute account of whose supposed pos- 
session has been given by Harsnet." — Dyer's Fo Ik-Lore in 
Shakespeare, p. 56. 

Freemasonry. — The corner-stone of the Memorial 
Edifice at Stratford-upon-Avon was laid in 1877 with 
full masonic ceremonial, under the assumption, based 
exclusively on the plays, that the dramatist was 
a member of the order. It bears the following 
inscription : — 

THIS STONE WAS LAID ON 
April 2 yd, 1877, 

BY 
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT WORSHIPFUL 

LORD LEIGH, 

P. G. M., Warwickshire. 

Many scholars, who have brought great learning 
to bear upon the point, both in England and in Ger- 
many, Mr. Wigston especially, are assured that the 
founder of Freemasonry was Francis Bacon. The 
fraternity may, indeed, be said to rest on the ' New 
Atlantis ' as its foundation. The pillars of ' Solo- 
mon's House,' as Bacon called his wonderful imagi- 
nary structure, are Faith and Love. 



VI. 

DISILLUSION, A GAIN. 

Here, then, is our " Shake-speare." A man born 
into the highest culture of his time, the consummate 
flower of a long line of distinguished ancestry ; of 
transcendent abilities, dominated by a genius for 
hard work; of aims in life at once the boldest and 
the most inspiring which the heart of man ever con- 
ceived ; in originality and power of thought, in learn- 
ing, in eloquence, in wit, and in marvellous insight 
into character, the acknowledged peer of the greatest 
of the human race. " Surely," says Holmes, " we 
may exclaim with Coleridge, not without amazement 
still, ' Merciful, wonder-making Heaven ! what a man 
was this Shakespeare ! Myriad-minded, indeed, he 



was 



Ours is an age of disillusion. Heroes whose names 
have kindled the flame of devotion to duty in the 
hearts of millions are fading into myths. The ma- 
jestic form of William Tell is found to be but a 
lengthened shadow thrown across the page of history. 
Even the faithful dog Gelert, over whose fate so 
many children have shed tears, has become as 
purely symbolic as the one that followed Yudhish- 
thira to the holy mount, and was thence, for his vir- 



Disillusion, a Gain. 265 

tues, translated into heaven. Why should the world 
longer worship at the shrine of a man of whose life it 
knows, almost literally, in a mass of disgusting fiction, 
but one significant fact, viz., that in his will, dispos- 
ing of a large property, he left to the wife of his 
youth and the mother of his children nothing but his 
" second-best bed " ! 

The conclusion of the whole matter may be stated 
thus : — 

The Sonnets will lose none of their sweetness, and 
the Plays none of their magnificence, by a change in 
the ascription of authorship. The world, however, 
will gain much. It will learn that effects are always 
commensurate with their causes, and that industry is 
the path to greatness. 



VII. 

BIOGRAPHY OF SHAKSPERE. 



SHAKSPERE IN FACT. SURMISES, LEGENDS, AND 

MYTHS STATED AS FACTS 

1564, April 26. Baptized at by the biographers. 
Stratford-on-Avon. 

"Saxon by his father and 
Norman by his mother; . , . 
one lobe of his brain seems 
to have been Normanly re- 
fined, and the other Saxonly 
sagacious." ^ — Jaines Russell 
Lowell, 

1 It is fortunate, in one sense, for Shakspere that so little is knowu 
of his life ; the critics can create him to suit themselves. On this 
point one of the latter takes us into his confidence, for he says 
(Wise's ' Shakespeare, his Birthplace and its Neighborhood'), "it is 
best for us to draw our own ideal." Mr. Lowell furnishes us with 
the first specimen of this kind of carpentry. 

Shakspere's lineage baffles research. Of his grandparents one 
only is known, Robert Arden, not of the gentry, as often said, but a 
husbandman. Richard Shakspere, of Snitterfield, also a husband- 
man, is supposed to have been his paternal grandfather, simply be- 
cause two young men, John and Henry Shakspere, were living at the 
same place at the same time and " of the age which Richard's sons 
might be." This John Shakspere is likewise merely supposed to 
have been the reputed poet's father. In the mathematical formulae 
of Shakespeareans, however, two suppositions combined equal a cer- 
tainty; whereas it is evident that the strength of a conclusion depend- 
ing upon repeated hypotheses is in inverse ratio to the number on 



, Fact and Fiction. 267 

1571-78. " Received the tech- 
nical or scholastic part 
of his education in the 
Grammar School of his 
native town." ^ — Prof. 
Baynes, Encyc. Brit. 

" " " Remained at school 
for at least six years." ^ 
— Ibid. 

" '^ "At school Shake- 
speare acquired some 
knowledge of Latin and 
oiQx^€^:' ^ — Richard 
Grant White. 

" " " Taken by his father 
to see [dramatic] per- 
formances at Strat- 
ford."*— /•;-£?/ Baynes. 

" " "At Shottery the 
poet met his future 

which it rests. The maiden names of the two grandmothers are irre- 
coverably lost. 

" Shakspere was not on his mother's side of Norman blood, as 
some have concluded." — Richard Grant White. 

1 No record. First mentioned by Rowe in 1709 on the authority 
of Thomas Betterton, the actor, who visited Stratford in the latter 
part of the seventeenth century, or more than one hundred years 
after Shakspere had attained school age. 

How much information Betterton gathered up may be inferred 
from the character of Rowe's Biography, which was largely based 
upon it, and in which, as Malone says, there are eleven statements of 
fact, two of them true, one doubtful, and eight false. 

2 No record. Stated on the authority of Betterton. 

3 An inference only, derived from the plays. No evidence exists 
that he attended any school whatever. All the traditions respecting 
his early life, his domestic surroundings and the indications de- 
rived from his handwriting afford presumptive proof that he was 
uneducated. 

* Wholly imaginary. 



26S 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



158: 



Nov. 28. 
marry 
way. 



Licensed to 
Anne Hatha- 



bride, in all the charm 
of her sunny girlhood ; 
and they may be said 
to have grown up to- 
gether."! — Pr^/. 
Baynes. 

1582, Dec. " Married." 2 — 
Richard Grant White. 



1583, May 26. His daughter 

Susanna baptized. 

1584, Feb. 2. Hamnet and Ju- 

dith, twins, baptized. 



1585. "The substantial 

facts in the story [of the 
deer-stealing] are that 
Shakspere in his youth 
was fond of woodland 
sports, and that in one 
of his hunting adven- 
tures he came into col- 



1 Wholly imaginary and absurd. She was nearly eight years his 
senior, and " might have dandled him in his infancy," as White says, 
"upon her knee." 

"The marriage-bond of November, 1582, includes the only evi- 
dences respecting Anne Hathaway during her maidenhood that have 
yet been discovered." — Halliu-ell-Phillipps' Outlines, Vol. II. p. 183. 

" There is unhappily no tradition indicating the birthplace of 
Shakspere's Anne upon which the least reliance can be placed." — 
Ibid., p. 189. 

In the entry on the Episcopal register for a marriage license, No- 
vember 27, 1582, the bride is called Anne Whateley of Temple Graf- 
ton ; in the bond given the next day to expedite the banns, the name 
appears as Anne Hathwey of Stratford. The first mention of the 
cottage at Shottery, now shown to visitors as her maiden residence, 
was made by Samuel Ireland (father of the celebrated forger), in a 
book entitled " Picturesque Views on the Warwickshire Avon," in 
1795, O'' nearly two and a half centuries after Anne Hathwey's birth. 

2 No record. A pure invention as to date. 



« Fact and Fiction. 269 

lision with Sir Thomas 
Lucy's keepers."^ — 
Prof. Baynes. 

1585-87. " With ' Venus and 
Adonis ' written, "^ if 
nothing else, Shake- 
speare went to Lon- 
don." — Richard Grant 
White. 

1592. "He had already 

1592. In London. His tested his faculty for 

name parodied as acting by occasional 

Shakc'Scetie in essays on the provin- 

Greene's ' Groats- cial stage." ^ — Prof. 

worth of Wit.' Bay ties. 



1 Reported as a tradition by Betterton, Capell, and Oldys, about a 
century after the alleged event. Based probably on the first scene of 
' The Merry Wives of Windsor,' and therefore fictitious. 

2 Unsupported by tesdmony of any kind and incredible. Will it 
be believed that, in inserting the qualifying clause, " if nothing else," 
White actually had in mind the tragedy of ' Hamlet ' .' 

3 A good illustration of the manner in which Shakspere's life has 
been written. In a prior part of the same article, Professor Baynes 
says : " It is not improbable that in connection with some of the com- 
panies [on their tours into the country], Shakespeare may have tried 
his hand both as poet and actor before leaving Stratford. . . . He 
may have been pressed by the actors to appear in some secondary 
part on the stage." It is not often that conjecture and fact are 
brought so closely together. Usually, it has taken two authors, one 
succeeding the other, to get a fact by this process into Shakspere's 
life. 

Mr. Lowell found a similar artifice in Masson's ' Life of Milton ' : 
" What he puts by way of a query on page 402 has become down- 
right certainty nine pages farther on." — Among My Books, p. 267. 

A curious instance of this easily besetting sin in Shakespearean 
commentators is found in the Rev. William Harness' ' Life of Shak- 
spere.' In 1768 Capell advanced the absurd hypothesis that Shak- 



270 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

1592. " Chettle apologizes 

to and commends Shak- 
spere, saying ' he was as 
sorry as if the original 
fault had been his own, 
to have offended a man 
so courteous, so gifted, 
and one who, by his 
worth and his ability, 
had risen in the esteem 
of many of his superi- 
ors in rank and sta- 
tion.' . . . Thus Shak- 
spere, within six or 
seven years of his de- 
parture from Stratford, 
a fugitive adventurer, 
had won admiration 
from the public, re- 
spect from his superi- 
ors, etc." ^ — Richard 
Grant White. 

r 593. " The Earl of South- 

ampton . . . had a spe- 
cial fondness for the 
drama; and, being a 
constant attendant up- 

spere was afflicted with lameness, basing it on the following lines in 
the ' Sonnets ' : — 

" So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite." — No. XXXVII. 

" Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt." — No. LXXXIX. 

Fifty-seven years afterward, Mr. Harness, without mentioning 
Capell, proclaimed the lameness as a fact, whereupon the announce- 
ment at once went the rounds of the newspaper press that three of 
England's greatest poets, Scott, Byron, and Shakspere, were cripples ! 

1 A mistake. Chettle neither made an apology to Shakspere nor 
commended him. The entire fabric, venerable with age, rests on a 
misapprehension. See pp. 150-153. 



Fact and Fictioii. 



271 



on the theatre, he saw 
much of Shakespeare 
and his plays." ^ — 
Richard Grant White. 
1593. To the Earl of South- 

ampton Shakespeare 
dedicated " his ' Venus 
and Adonis,' although 
he had not asked per- 
mission to do so, as the 
dedication shows; and 
in those days and long 
after, without some 
knowledge of his man, 
and some opportunity 
of judging how he 
would receive the com- 
pliment, a player would 
not have ventured to 
take such a liberty with 
the name of a noble- 
man." ^ — Ibid. 

1596. Aug. II. His son, Ham- 

net,buried at Stratford. 

1597. Bought New Place 
in Stratford. 

1598. Oct. 25. Returned on 

the rolls of Stratford 
as the holder (during 
a famine) of ten quar- 
ters of corn. 
" Sold I load of stone 

to Town of Stratford 
for \od. 

1 As to Shakspere, wholly imaginary. Not the slightest evi- 
dence exists that Shakspere, the actor, was patronized by the Earl 
of Southampton. 

2 A just commentary, discrediting Shakspere as the author of the 
poem. Southampton and Bacon were intimate friends. 



2/2 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



1598, Feb. 4. Richard Quiney 






addresses a letter to 






Shakspere, asking a 






loan of ^30 on secur- 






ity. ^ 






1 599. Applied for a grant 


1599. 


" The patent of 


of coat-armor to his 




arms granted to his 


father." 2 




father." 8 — /'r^/ 
Baynes. 



1600. Sues John Clayton 

for ^7, and obtains 
verdict. 

1602. Buys two parcels of 
land and a cottage in 
Stratford. 

1603. Appointed one of 
His Majesty's servants 
for theatrical perform- 
ances. 

1604. Sues Philip Rogers 
at Stratford for £\ 
\^s. \od. for malt de- 
livered, including 2s. 
loaned. 

1605. Purchases a moiety 
of the tithes of Strat- 



" King James, it is 
well known, honored 



^ The only letter to him extant. None from him to any one ever 
heard of. 

2 " There can hardly be any doubt that the pedigree which he 
constructed for himself in order to obtain a coat-of-arms from the 
Herald's College, and so enter the ranks of 'gentlemen,' was 'whole- 
sale lying,' and that Shakspere knew it was." — Thomas Davidson. 

" It was for this social consideration that he toiled and schemed." 
— Richard Grant White. 

3 The application appears to have been rejected. No record of a 
grant on the books of the Herald's College has ever been published. 

" It seems that the grant was not ratified." — Henry Morley, Eng- 
lish IVr/ters, Vol. X. p. 498. (1893.) 



Fact and Fiction. 



273 



ford, Old Stratford, 
Bishopton, and Wel- 
combe for ^440. 

1607, June 5. His daughter 

Susanna marries Dr. 
John Hall, at Stratford. 

1608. Sues John Adden- 
broke of Stratford, 
obtaining judgment 
for £6^ together with 
^i \s. costs. Adden- 
broke not being found, 
sues his bondsman 
Hornby. 

" Present, as sponsor, 

at baptism of son of 
Henry Walker, in 
Stratford. 
1610. Purchases 20 acres 

of pasture land in 
Stratford. 



Shakespeare so far as 
to write to him with 
his own hand."^ — 
Schlegel. 



1608. He was in the habit 

of visiting at several 
titled houses, amongst 
others those of the Earl 
of Bedford and Sir 
John Harrington." 2 — 
Prof. Baynes. 

" " The only known 

volume that certainly 
belonged to Shakspere 
I and contains his auto- 

graph is Florio's ver 
sion of Montaigne's 
Essays in the British 
Museum." ^ — Ibid. 



1 First mentioned nearly one hundred and fifty years after Shak- 
speare's death, by Oldys, who said he received the story from Shef- 
field, Duke of Buckingham, who in turn claimed that he received it 
from the notorious Sir William Davenant. Suitable only for the 
most robust credulity. 

" There is no proof that any personal patronage was extended to 
Shakspere by either Elizabeth or James." — IVarcfs EfigUsh Dra- 
matic Literature, Vol. II. p. 279. 

. '^ A sheer fabrication. " Of Shakspere's social life during his long 
residence in London we have not even a tradition." — Richard Grant 
White. About 1603, Sir Walter Raleigh founded the Mermaid Club, 
which, Mr. White says, " owes its wide celebrity and perpetual fame 
chiefly to Shakespeare," although (he adds naively) "there is no 
evidence that Shakspere was one of its members." 

3 The alleged autograph being beyond all reasonable doubt a for- 
gery, it is safe to say that Shakspere never possessed the book. 

18 



2 74 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



1612, Brings suit to pro- 
tect his interest in the 
tithes of corn, grain, 
hay, wool, lambs, etc., 

of Stratford. 

1610-13. " He returned to 
Stratford a disap- 
pointed m a n ." ^ — 
Richard Grant White. 

161 3, March 10. Purchases a 

house in London for 

" March II. Mortgages the 

same for £,(iO. 
" June. Mrs. Hall brings 

suit against John Lane 

for slander. 2 

1614, Oct. 28. Guaranteed by- 

William Replingham 
against loss by enclos- 
ure of commons at 
Stratford. 

1 A total error. Shakspere returned to Stratford in middle life, 
possessed of that which had evidently been the sole object of his am- 
bition, a large fortune. We have no hint from any source whatever 
that the society of his illiterate neighbors, in a " dirty village " 
(White), was not perfectly congenial to him. 

2 " In June, 1613, there was a tiresome bit of gossip in circularion 
at Stratford-on-Avon, respecting Mrs. Hall, Shakespeare's elder 
daughter, and Ralph Smith and John Palmer. Matters came to such 
a pass that Dr. Hall deemed it advisable to take proceedings in the 
Ecclesiastical Court against one of the persons who had slandered 
his wife. The case was heard at Worcester, July 15, 1613, and ap- 
pears to have been conducted somewhat mysteriously, the deposition 
of Robert Whatcot, the poet's intimate friend, being the only evi- 
dence recorded, and throwing no substantial light on the merits of the 
dispute." — Halliwell-Phillipps' Outlines, p. 168. 

Lane made no defence, and was excommunicated. 

3 Shakspere at first opposed the enclosures as contrary to his per- 



Fact and Fiction. 275 

1614, Nov. 16. Comes to Lon- 
don. 

i6i4,Nov. 17. Explainsto 
Thomas Greene how 
far the enclosure at 
Welcombe will ex- 
tend.i 

1616, Feb. II. His daughter 
Judith marries 
Thomas Quiney with- 
out a license.^ 
" Bridegroom and 

bride arraigned be- 
fore the Ecclesiastical 
Court at Worcester 
for violation of law. 

1616, March 25. Makes his 
will. 3 

sonal interests, but afterwards, on being privately guaranteed against 
loss by the promoter of the scheme, withdrew his opposition. The 
remonstrance of the town, addressed to him on behalf of the poorer 
classes, seems to have had no effect. 

" It is certain that the poet was in favor of the enclosures." — 
HaUkvell-PhiUipps' Otttlines, p. i68. 

" That Shakspere was accessor}- to an attempt to enclose the com- 
mon lands of Stratford and so oppress the poor, is beyond a doubt." 
— Thomas Davidson, Al Y. World, 1S87. 

1 One of the two conversations only in which Shakspere is re- 
ported to have taken part. The other is given by Manningham. 

2 " Judith's marriage with Mr. Quiney was a mysterious and hur- 
ried one. There appears to have been some reason for accelerating 
the event." — HdUhvell-PhiUipps' Otttlines, p. 182. 

Mr. Quiney was a liquor-dealer ; he was fined by the town for 
profanity and for making a public nuisance of his tippling-shop. 

3 " Shakspere's will was one of great particularity-, making little 
legacies to nephews and nieces, and leaving swords and rings to 
friends and acquaintances ; and yet his wife's name is omitted from 
the document in its original form, and only appears by an after- 
thought, in an interlineation, as if his attention had been called to the 



276 



Bacon vs. Shakspere. 



1616, April 23. His death. 
1635, Nov. 25. Dr. Hall's 

death. - 
1642. Mrs. Hall sells her 

husband's note-book 

under peculiar circum- 

stances.2 



161 6, April. "Two of the 
most cherished of his 
companions and fellow- 
poets, Drayton and Ben 
Jonson, had paid a visit 
to Stratford and been 
entertained by Shak- 
spere only a few days 
before his death." ^ — 
Prof. Baynes. 



omission, and for decency's sake he would not have the mother of his 
children unnoticed altogether. The lack of any other bequest than 
the furniture of her chamber is of small moment in comparison with 
the slight shown by that interlineation. A second-best bed might be 
passed over; but what can be done with second-best thoughts.'" — 
Richard Grant White. 

" She .was left by her husband without house or furniture (except 
the second-best bed), or a kind word, or any other token of love." — 
Chief justice Ca)nphell's Legal Acquirements of Shakespeare, p 106. 

" He had forgot her." — Malone. 

" In his will he only sparingly and meanly bequeathed to her his 
second-best bed." — Gervinus. 

1 A tradition not heard of till fifty years after Shakspere's death. 

- Dr. Hall was expelled from the corporation of Stratford in 

1633- 

3 Dr. Cooke, who published this note-book in 1659, states in the 

preface how he came into possession of it. It appears that at the 
beginning of the civil war, probably in 1642, he was acting as surgeon 
to a Roundhead troop stationed at Stratford Bridge; and, having 
been invited to visit New Place, was shown by Mrs. Hall some books 
and manuscripts that had belonged to her deceased husband. He 
was also informed that she had in the house some other books, once 



Fact and Fiction. 277 

1649, July 1 1 . Mrs. Hall's 

death. 
1662, Feb. 9. Mrs. Quiney's 

death. 
1669-70. Death of Elizabeth, 

the only grandchild 

and last lineal de- 
scendant of William 

Shakspere of Strat- 

ford-on-Avon. 

In 1780 George Steevens wrote the following oft- 
quoted summary: — 

" All that is known with any degree of certainty concerning 
Shakspere is — that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon — 
married and had children there — went to London, where he 
commenced actor and wrote poems and plays — returned to 
Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried." 

We venture to bring tliis summary to date, as 
follows : — 

All that is known with any degree of certainty 
concerning Shakspere is, that he was born at Strat- 
ford-upon-Avon ; married, and had children there ; 
went to London, where he became an actor, and was 
reputed to be the author of poems and plays ; ac- 
quired wealth ; applied for a title, which was refused ; 

the property of a physician who had pledged them to Dr. Hall for 
money advanced. Then ensued the following conversation : " I told 
her that if I liked them I would give her the money again. Mrs. 
Hall then brought them forth, amongst which there was this, with 
another of the author's, both intended for the press. I, being ac- 
quainted with Mr. Hall's hand, told her that one or two of them were 
her husband's and showed them to her. She denied, I affirmed, till 
I perceived she began to be offended, and at last I returned her the 
money." 



278 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

invested money in real estate, and in the tithes of his 
native town ; instituted many lawsuits ; returned to 
Stratford; sold malt; entertained a preacher at his 
house, and drew on the town for one quart of claret 
wine and one quart of sack (20(/.) for the occasion ; 
favored a conspiracy to enclose the commons there ; 
made his will, died, and was buried. 

" There is not recorded of him [Shakspere] one noble or 
lovable action." — Thomas Davidson. 

" An obscure and profane life." — Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

"A record unadorned by a single excellence or virtue." — 
William O^ Connor in Ham let's Note-Book. 

" I am not sure that we should not venerate Shakespeare as 
much if the biographers had left him undisturbed in his obscu- 
rity. To be told that he played a trick on his brother player in 
a licentious amour, or that he died of a drunken frolic . . . 
does not exactly inform us of the man who wrote ' Lear.' " — 
Hallam. 

" Whether Bacon wrote the wonderful plays or not, I am 
quite sure the man Shakspere neither did nor could." — John 
G. Whittle?'. 

" I am a firm believer in the Baconian theory." — BenJ. F. 
Butler. 

" I would not be surprised to find myself ranged with Mrs. 
Pott and Judge Holmes on the side of the philosopher against 
the play-actor." — Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

" Any man who believes that William Shakspere of Strat- 
ford wrote 'Hamlet' or 'Lear' is a fool." — John Bright. 

" Ask your own hearts, ask your common sense, to con- 
ceive the possibility of the author of the plays being . . . the 
anomalous, the wild, the irregular genius of our daily criticism." 
— Coleridge. 

In a word, to look persistently to this source for 
the literary masterpieces of all time is to illustrate 
that subtle and practically unlimited power of the 



Unwise Conservatism. 279 

human will to ignore, in the face of consequences 
deemed objectionable, the most elementary laws of 
evidence. It is necessary, perhaps, that the car of 
progress be equipped, like our railway trains, with a 
dozen brakemen to one stoker; but the time will 
come, we do not hesitate to predict, when this un- 
reasoning and perverse, not to say intemperate, con- 
servatism in the public mind on the subject of the 
authorship of " Shake-speare " will be universally 
regretted as a reflection upon the scholarship of our 
age. 



VIII. 

SUMMARY. 

One word more. A common farm-laborer in 
England uses, it is said, five hundred words; the 
average educated business man, three thousand ; a 
writer like Thackeray, five thousand ; the great poet, 
scholar, and publicist, John Milton, " who carried 
the idiomatic powers of the English tongue," says 
Macaulay, " to their highest perfection, and to whose 
style every ancient and every modern language con- 
tributed something of grace, of energy, and of music," 
used seven thousand. How many words did the au- 
thor of " Shake-speare " use? According to Professor 
Craik, a recognized authority in this branch of sci- 
ence, twenty-one thousand, — inflectional forms not 
counted. 

Who was it, living in England in the latter part of 
the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth 
centuries, that compassed so enormous a range of 
diction? Was it William Shakspere, the actor, born 
and bred in what Halliwell-Phillipps called a " bookless 
neighborhood," where the number of books outside 
of the school and the church could not have ex- 
ceeded, as Richard Grant White tells us, a half-dozen 
in the whole town, — where, in a population of about 
twelve hundred, not more than fifty, or at most one 



♦ Summary. 281 

hundred, persons could read or write, whose own 
father and mother could not read or write, and both 
of whose daughters went to their graves late in life 
without having read, it is supposed, a line of their 
father's works, if he ever wrote any, — one of them 
even selling the manuscript copy of a book, written 
by her deceased husband for publication, because 
she could not identify the handwriting, though re- 
peatedly urged to do so? Was this the man, unedu- 
cated, as his contemporaries called him, an impostor, 
as every one who knew him in the character of a 
dramatist called him, — was this the man whose vo- 
cabulary, enriched with the spoils of five languages 
besides his own, was greater, three times greater, it 
would seem, than that of any other mortal who ever 
lived? Must we permit the nineteenth century to go 
out and join the vast congregation of the ages stained 
with a superstition so palpable, so humiliating to us, 
so unspeakably absurd as this? 

Let us rather turn to the man who at the age of 
twelve entered Cambridge University ; who at fifteen 
exhausted that fount of learning, and left it without 
taking his degree ; who then devoted three years to 
the further study of literature, art, science, govern- 
ment, and the modern languages, on the Continent; 
who on his return home notified his uncle, the Prime 
Minister of England, that he had made all knowledge, 
ALL KNOWLEDGE, his province ; who was kept from 
active service in political hfe till he was nearly fifty 
years old, and was then found to be in the possession 
of phenomenal habits of study which his acknowl- 
edged works do not account for, — the first of his 
philosophical series not appearing till he had been 



282 Bacon vs. Shakspere. 

twenty-nine years out of college ; whose mind was 
comprehensive rather than analytical, unable to 
grasp the commonest physical science in which 
mathematics plays a prominent part, but conspicu- 
ously rich in that which makes the plays immortal, — 
practical wisdom, knowledge of human nature, and 
of the secret springs of human conduct ; whose man- 
ner of writing was wonderfully varied and ductile ; 
who has justly been styled the Prose-Poet of Modern 
Science ; who privately styled himself a " concealed 
poet; " who in the most solemn manner before his 
death claimed to have sought the good of all men in 
some work or works which were " despised," which 
he had therefore written, as he said, " in a weed," or 
under a pseudonym, and which Sir Toby Matthew 
undoubtedly referred to when he pronounced the 
author the most prodigious wit of all the world, tJioiigh 
known by the name of another ; and, finally, whose in- 
tellectual eminence is to this day one of the unsolved 
enigmas of mankind. 



INDEX. 



Abbott, Edwin A., his introduction to Mrs. Pott's edition of the 
Promus, 54, 55; on Bacon's inaccuracies, 137; Bacon's private 
character, 181. 

Absque hoc, a species of traverse known to Shake-speare, 8. 

Addisox, Joseph, on Bacon's intellectual powers, 46-48 ; Shake- 
speare's literary style, 120; Bacon's servants, 177 ; Bacon's private 
character, iSi. 

Adonis, Gardens of, 214. 

Advancement OF Learning, a curious typographical mistake in, 115. 

^SCHYLUS, likeness of Clytemnestra to Lady Macbeth, 2, 3. 

Allgemeine Zeitung, on reasons for Bacon's concealment of 
authorship of Shake-speare, 126. 

Allibone, S. a., on extent of Shake-speare's knowledge, 9, 10; on 
Stephen Gosson, 49. 

Alphabet, works of the, mysterious references to, 51. 

Amores, Ovid's, quotation from, in 'Venus and Adonis,' 15. 

Anachronisms in Shake-speare, 129-134; in Bacon. 134-137. 

Apothegms, Bacon's, errors in, 135-137- 

Arber, Edward, his edition of Bacon's Essays, '^. 

Aristotle, quoted in error by Bacon and Shake-speare, 129. 

Arnold, Matthew, on Shakspere self-school'd, 12. 

Astrology, believed in by Bacon and Shake-speare, 251. 

Athen.€;um, the (London), on Shakspere's indifference to literary 
fame, 36; Shake-speare's knowledge of Italian scenes and cus- 
toms, 215. 

Aubrey, John, on Bacon as a concealed poet, 85 ; various estimates 
of, 85. 

Auld Robin Gray, concealed authorship of, 127. 

Bacon, Lady Anne, culture of, 48 : chides her sons on account of 
their fondness for the drama, 88 ; insanity- of, 236. 

Bacon, Anthony, his strong dramatic tastes, 142 ; rescues Francis 
from prison, 87 ; commemorated in ' Merchant of Venice,' 87 ; 
opposed to Lord Burleigh, 206. 



284 



Index. 



Bacon, Delia, the first to reveal true authorship of Shake-speare 108 ; 
on Bacon's philanthropic spirit, 182. 

Bacon, Francis, name, 12 ; alleged indifference to fame as a drama- 
tist, 36, 124, 129; intellectual greatness, 44-48 ^ parentage, 48; 
political ambition, 48,49; secret connection with the stage, 50; 
enigmatical correspondence with Sir Toby Matthew, 51, 52 ; 
Promus, 53-57 ; parallelisms, 57-80 ; love and knowledge of 
flowers, 80-82; Northumberland MSS., 82-84; calls himself a 
" concealed poet," 85, 282 ; so called by Aubrey, 85 ; intimacy 
with Florio, 85 ; probable secret author of a sonnet commended 
by Florio, 86 ; acquainted with Montaigne's Essays, 86 ; want 
of employment, 87-88 ; imprisoned for debt, 87 ; released by 
his brother Anthony, 87 ; chided by his mother on account of 
his dramatic tastes, 88 ; his " working fancy," 88 ; becomes inti- 
mate with Ben Jonson, 104; fills all numbers, 106; his History 
of Henry VH., filling the gap in the historical series of plays, 
108, 109; in private life and at leisure when the plays are 
first collected and published, 112; careless of the printing of 
his works, 115; ' Timon of Athens' and 'Henry VIII.' auto- 
biographical, 116, 117; alludes to certain writings as works 
of recreation, which, if acknowledged, might make him more 
famous, 127; errors in his writings, 129-137; his Essay on 
Love, containing sentiments similar to Shake-speare's, 13S-140; 
his practical knowledge of dramatic art, 141, 142; the 'Misfor- 
tunes of Arthur,' 142 ; recommends that dramatic art be taught in 
schools, 143; knowledge of localities in Warwickshire, 145, 146; 
dark period in his life, 157; his acknowledged poetry, 159 ; transla- 
tions of the Psalms, 160, 161 ; translation of a Greek epigram, 
165, 166; chancellor of Mt. Parnassus, 167; writes to Essex that 
the waters of Parnassus are quenching his thirst for office, 168 ; 
the poetical character of his prose, 169-172; admitted by Sped- 
ding to have had all the capabilities of a great poet, 171, 172; 
his treatment of Essex, 174; bribery charges, 175-178; his in- 
difference to money, 175; his servants, 176; testimony of con- 
temporaries to his private character, 178; of his biographers and 
critics, 181-183; extent of his vocabulary, 184; various styles of 
writing, 187-195 ; use of the phrase, " I cannot tell," 195-198 ; 
familiarity with hunting and hawking, 203 ; faculty for detecting 
remote analogies, 203 ; constantly making alterations in his 
writings, 203, 204 ; educated at Cambridge, and familiar with 
local dialect, 204, 205 ; caricatures Sir John Oldcastle as Falstaff, 
and Lord Burleigh as Polonius, 205-211 ; refers to Sir Edward 
Coke in 'Twelfth Night,' 212; plagiarisms, 212 : familiar with story 
of Cymbeline, 213; fond of punning, 213; classical lore in his 
writings, 214, 215; sojourn on the Continent, 215; familiar with 
courts and court etiquette, 223 ; cipher-writing, 223, 224; singular 



Index. 285 



use of the word weed, 224; character of his philosophy, 225-229; 
knowledge of history, 229, 230; of law, 230; of medicine, 235, 
236; of natural history, 237, 244; his religion, 244, 245; his 
definition of poetry, 246, 247 ; knowledge of musical science, 247- 
249; an orator, 249; fondness for emblems, 252; summary of his 
life, 281, 282. 

Baltimore Sun, correspondent of, on Shake-speare's knowledge of 
Italian scenes and customs, 216, 218. 

Barton-on-the-Heath, 146. 

Baynes, T. S., on Shake-speare's knowledge of Latin, 2, 15 ; of Ital- 
ian, 4; of French, 5; of classics, 6 ; extent and variety of Shake- 
speare's knowledge, 9. 

Beaumont, Francis, his graceful tribute to Bacon, 178. 

Bed of Ware, 212. 

Bees in Shake-speare, 241-243. 

Betterton, Thomas, his visit to Stratford, 267. 

Billiards, known to the ancients, 133. 

Boener, Peter, his testimony to Bacon's private character, 178. 

Bohemia, sea-coast of, 94, 133. 

Bright, John, his opinion of the authorship of ' Hamlet ' and ' King 
Lear,' 278. 

Browne, C. Elliot, social condition of Stratford in time of Shak- 
spere, 19. 

Burleigh, Lord, caricatured as Polonius, 205-211. 

Bust of Shakspere, description of, 31, 32, 218. 

Butler, Benjamin F., his opinion of the authorship of Shake-speare, 
278. 

Byron, Lord, his doubts concerning authorship of Shake-speare, 
118. 



Cambridge University, dialect of, 205. 

Campbell, Chief Justice, on Shake-speare's knowledge of law, 7, 

231. 
Cavendish, Margaret, on the comparative literary merits of her 

husband and Shake-speare, 120. 
Chamberlain, Mellen, on Shake-speare's autograph in Boston 

Public Library, 13, 14. 
Chambers' Edinburg Journal, on Ben Jonson and Bacon's secret, 

108. 
Cheltenham, Bacon's estate in, 146. 
Chettle, Henry, his alleged commendation of Shakspere, 148, 

150-153. -70- 
Church, Richard W., on Bacon's private character, 182 ; poetical 

nature of Bacfon's philosophy, 229. 
Cipher-writing, Bacon's studies in, 223. 



286 Index. 

Clarke, Charles and Mary Cowden, their opinion that the author 
of the Shake-speare plays was educated at a university, 6 ; on 
Shake-speare's knowledge of law, 8. 

Coat-armor, John Shakspere's, 27, 28, 272. 

Coke, Sir Edward, caricatured in 'Twelfth Night,' 211, 212. 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, his opinion that Shake-speare had a 
scholastic education, 6 ; philosophy in Shake-speare, 9 ; incon- 
gruity between the life of Shakspere and the works of Shake- 
speare, 43 ; unique character of the Shake-speare plays, 154, 
278. 

Collier, J. P., on the ' Misfortunes of Arthur,' 142. 

Common lands at Stratford, enclosure of, 28, 275. 

Composite authorship, theory of, 153-155. 

Condell, Henry, associate editor of the first folio, 113, 148, 149. 

Confcssio Fraternitatis, concerning an imposture on the stage, 42. 

Craik, George L., on extent of Shake-speare's vocabulary, 1S5; on 
mysterious nature of Bacon's eminence, 227. 

Crispinus, a caricature of Shakspere, 94-100. 

Cuckoo, in Shake-speare, 243. 

Cymbeline, story of, 212, 213. 



D'Alembert, on intellectual eminence of Francis Bacon, 47. 
Davenant, Sir William, re-writes Shake-speare's plays, 121; letter 

of King James I. to Shakspere, 273. 
Davidson, Thomas, on the Shakspere coat-of-arms, 272 ; on the facts 

of Shakspere's life, 278. 
Davies, John, asked by Bacon to be "good to concealed poets," 85. 
Davis, Cushing K., on Shake-speare's knowledge of law, 8. 
Deer in Shake-speare, 243. 

Denham, Sir John, testimony of, to Shakspere's illiteracy, 11. 
Dethic, Sir William, charged with bribery in the matter of the 

Shakspere coat-of-arms, 28. 
DiGGES, Leonard, alleged testimony of, to Shakspere as the author 

of the plays, 148-150. 
Dixon, Hepworth, descriptive sketches of Bacon, 141, 173, 174; 

on the bribery charges, 177 ; Bacon's philanthropy, 182. 
Donnelly, Ignatius, concerning portraits of Shakspere, 36 ; diction 

of Shake-speare, 99 ; triple forms of expression, 194. 
Dove, the, in Shake-speare, 243. 
Dowdall, John, his visit to Stratford, 11. 
Dowden, Edward, on Shake-speare's admiration of men of action, 

139; the dark period in Shakspere's life, 155-15S. 
Doyle, John P., on trial scene in ' Merchant of Venice,' 232-235. 
Draper, John W., on character of Bacon's system of philosophy, 

228. 



Index. 287 

Droeshout engraving, the, 35. 

Dryden, John, on Shakspere's illiteracy, n, 12 ; his criticisms of the 
plays, 120; re-writes the 'Tempest,' 121. 



Edinburg Review, on Bacon's jest-book, 138. 

Elze, Karl, on Shake-speare's knowledge of French, 4, 5 ; of Span- 
ish, 5 ; of Italian scenes and customs, 216; of Romano as a sculptor, 
219. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, on Shake-speare's wisdom, 8 ; greatness 
of Shake-speare unrecognized by contemporaries, 23 ; incongruity 
between life of Shakspere and works ascribed to him, 43, 1 58. 

Erdmann, Johann E., on Bacon's treatment of Essex, 174. 

Errors and anachronisms, in Bacon and Shake-speare, 129-137. 

Essex, Earl ok, treason of, 119; opposes Bacon, 146; prosecuted by 
Bacon, 174. 



Farmer, Richard, on Shake-speare's knowledge of foreign lan- 
guages, 215. 
Fearon, Francis, on Bacon's correspondence with Sir Toby Matthew, 

SI- 
Feis, Jacob, on Crispinus as a caricature of Shakspere, 100. 
Field, B. Rush, on Shake-speare's medical knowledge, 236. 
Fleay, Frederic Gard, on alleged apology of Chettle to Shakspere, 

152. 
Florio, John, remarks on a concealed poet, 85, 86. 
Flowers, parallel lists of, 80-82. 
Folio, First, contents of, iii; compared with quartos, 112,114; 

printing and pagination, 115. 
Forgeries, Ireland's, 123, 124. 
Freemasonry, in Shake-speare, 263. 
French, Shake-speare's knowledge of, 4. 
Friswell, James H., opinion of Shakspere's bust at Stratford, 32 ; 

of new portrait, 35. 
Fuller, Thomas, testimony of, concerning Shakspere's illiteracy, 11 ; 

universality of Bacon's genius, 169. 
FuRNEss, William H., unable to harmonize the facts of Shakspere's 

life with the writings ascribed to him, 155. 



Galileo, his theory of the tides, 128. 

Garrick, David, his description of Stratford, 19; use of Shake- 
speare text, 128. 

Gervinus, G. G., on Shake-speare's knowledge of Latin, 2 ; of Ital- 
ian, 4 ; of other foreign languages, 5 ; of the classics, 6; on Shake- 



288 Index. 

speare's treatment of love, 140 ; similar combination of mental 

powers in Bacon and Shake-speare, 228. 
Gibbon, Edward, on Shake-speare's knowledge of Greek, 3. 
GiFFORD, William, his defence of Ben Jonson, 92 ; on Shakspere's 

alleged assistance to Ben Jonson, 93. 
Gladstone, William E., on the bribery charges, 177, 178. 
Goethe, Wilhelm von, anachronisms of, 133; use of translations, 

215. 
Good-dawning, salutation in ' Lear ' and the Promus, 55. 
GossoN, Stephen, opinion of theatres, 49. 
Grammar School at Stratford, character of, 16, 19, 267. 
Granville, George, re-writes 'Merchant of Venice,' 121. 
Grave-diggers' scene in ' Hamlet,' origin of, 4. 
Green, Henry, emblems in heraldry, 255. 
Greene, Robert, his character, 38 n. ; on Shakspere's illiteracy, 

12; personal hostility to Shakspere, 41, 150, 151. 
Guthrie, William, on Bacon's servants, 177. 



Hall, John, his professional acquirements, 236; expelled from Cor- 
poration of Stratford, 276. 

Hallam, Henry, on Bacon's genius, 47. 

Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O., on curriculum of Stratford Grammar 
school, 15; sanitary condition of Stratford, 19; John Shakspere's 
application for coat-armor, 27, 28 ; on enclosure of common lands 
at Stratford, 28 ; the Stratford bust, 32 ; new portrait of Shak- 
spere, 35 ; play-acting and play-writing in time of Shakspere, 51 ; 
the Shake-speare text, 124. 

' Hamlet,' date of, 20 ;/. 

Hart, Joseph C, early doubt of, concerning authorship of Shake- 
speare, 1x8. 

Hart, Joseph S., on Shakspere's bust at Stratford, 32. 

Harvey, Gabriel, on authorship of the early ' Hamlet,' 20. 

Harvey, William, unnoticed by Bacon, 227. 

Hathaway, Anne, her cottage, 26S ; bequest from her husband, 265, 
276. 

Hawkins, Sir John, on Bacon's knowledge of the theory of music, 247. 

Heard, Franklin Fiske, on Shake-speare's knowledge of law, 8. 

Heat, similar conceptions of, in Bacon and Shake-speare, 129. 

Heminge, John, associate editor of the first folio, 113, 148. 

'Henry VI.,' play of, enlarged for the folio, 112. 

Henry VH., Reign of, omitted in the historical series of the Shake- 
speare dramas, 108, 109. 

Henry VIII., play of, its autobiographical character, 116, 117. 

Heraldry, in ' Pericles,' 252-261. 

Heywood, Thomas, his personal reference to Shakspere, 38. 



• Index. 289 

Milliard, Nicholas, his portrait of Bacon, 92. 

Holmes, Nathaniel, on Shake-speare's knowledge of the classics, 5; 

his work on the Authorship of Shake-speare, 7 ; parallelisms, 79 ; 

cover of Northumberland MSS., 82, 83. 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, on the Baconian theory, 278. 
Honorificabilitudinitatibus, 60, 83. 
Howes, Edmund, on Francis Bacon as a poet, 167. 
Hudson, H. N., on Falstaff as a philosopher, 9. 
Hunter, Joseph, on classical lore in Shake-speare, 215. 

Ingleby, Clement M., on position of Shake-speare among his con- 
temporaries, 23, 24 ; Droeshout engraving, 35 ; play-acting and play- 
writing in time of Shake-speare, 51 ; Ben Jonson's criticism of 
the 'Tempest,' loi ; testimony of contemporaries, 148. 

Ireland, Samuel, makes first mention of Anne Hathaway's Cottage, 
268. 

Ireland, William Henry, Shakespeare forgeries of, 123, 124. 

Isle of Dogs, Nash's, 82, 83. 

Italian Language, Shake-speare's knowledge of, 3. 

James I., King, his letter to Shakspere, 273. 

Jest-book, Bacon's, 138. 

Johnson, Samuel, on wisdom in Shake-speare, 9 ; his criticism of 
the plays, 120. 

JoNSON, Ben, his relations to Bacon, 91, 104, 105; verses commen- 
datory of Droeshout engraving, 91 ; enmity to Shakspere, 92-101 ; 
eulogy on Shake-speare, loi, 102 ; on Bacon's private character, 
178. 

Junius, letters of, 127. 

Khunrath, Heinrich, concerning an alleged imposture on the 
stage, 42. 

Kill-cow conceit, definition of, 40. 

Knight, Charles, finds traces of Shake-speare in 'Antigone 'of 
Sophocles, 5 ; on Shake-speare's knowledge of classical antiquity, 
6 ; on Shake-speare's retirement to Stratford and termination of 
literary career in middle life, 24; Troilus and Cressida, no; on 
the Ireland forgeries, 124; Shake-speare's knowledge of Italian 
scenes and customs, 216. 

Landor, Walter Savage, his estimate of Bacon's genius, 48 ; on 

Milton's verses to Shake-speare, 122. 
Lang, Andrew, on Shake-speare's commendation of Giulio Romano 

as a sculptor, 219. 

19 



290 Index. 



Langlin, J. N., on Warwickshire provincialisms in Shake-speare, 
147. 

Latin Language, Shake-speare's knowledge of, 1-3. 

Lark, the, in Shake-speare, 240. 

Law, Shake-speare's knowledge of, 7, 8, 230-235 ; study of, for the 
" merry tales," 56. 

Lessing, G. E., on rules of the drama relating to anachronisms, 133, 
134; unique character of the plays, 154. 

LlEBiG, Baron, his opinion of Bacon as a philosopher, 227. 

Lodge, Thomas, his connection with Robert Greene, 152. 

Lowell, James Russell, on Shake-speare's knowledge of the Greek 
drama, 3 ; extent of Shake-speare's knowledge, 9 ; Shakspere's 
retirement to Stratford in middle life and occupation there, 24; 
indifference to fame, 36; Shake-speare, an apparition, 44 ; philoso- 
phy of war, 68; unique character of the plays, 154; his opinion 
of Ulrici, 157; Shake-speare's genius, 159; classical lore in 
Shake-speare, 215; Shakspere's parentage, 266. 

Lytton, Sir Edward Bulwer, on Bacon as a poet, 171. 



Macaulay, T. B., on Bacon's intellect, 44, 173; Bacon's fame, 183. 

Maginn, William, on Shake-speare's knowledge of foreign lan- 
guages, 215. 

Malone, Edmund, finds traces of Shake-speare in Latin authors, 5 ; 
on Shake-speare's knowledge of law, 8. 

Manchester, Rev. L. C., metrical extracts from Bacon and Shake- 
speare compared, 200. 

Manningham, John, his personal reference to Shakspere, 38. 

Marlowe, Christopher, origin of English blank verse for the 
drama, 40; Chettle's apology to, 151, 152. 

Marston, John, caricatured by Ben Jonson, 97-99. 

Massey, Gerald, on Shake-speare's knowledge of law, 231. 

Masson, David, his opinion of Milton's sonnet to Shake-speare, 122 ; 
criticism on his life of Milton, 269. 

Matthew, Thomas, fictitious name on the title-page of a Bible, 36. 

Medicine, knowledge of, possessed by Bacon and Shake-speare, 
235, 236. 

Medwin, Thomas, conversations with Lord Byron, 118. 

' Merchant of Venice,' Italian character of, 4; possible origin, 87; 
trial scene in, 232-235. 

Mermaid Club, founded by Sir Walter Raleigh, 273. 

' Merry Wives of Windsor,' enlarged for the folio, 112. 

' Midsummer Night's Dream,' Greek source of Helena's lament 
in, 2. 

Milton, John, his allusions to Shake-speare, 122 ; his translation of 
the Psalms, 162, 163; extent of his vocabulary, 280. 



Index. 291 



MiNTO, William, on Bacon's inaccuracies, 137. 

Misfortunes of Arthur, the, 142. 

Money, relative value of, 23 ; the " muck of the world," 202. 

Montagu, Basil, on Bacon's temperament, 47 ; treatment of ser- 
vants, 176, 177. 

Montaigne, Michel, known to Bacon, 86; quoted in the ' Tempest,' 
86; Shakspere's alleged autograph in copy of Florio's translation 
of his Essays, 86. 

Morgan, Appleton, on Stratford Grammar School, 16, 19; his own 
position on the question of the authorship of Shake-speare, 19; 
Droeshout engraving, 35; no claim made to the plays by or for 
Shakspere, 36; on Sir Toby Matthew's postscript, 53; paral- 
lelisms, 80; early critics of Shake-speare, 119; translations of the 
Psalms by Bacon and Milton compared, 161, 162 ; Shake-speare 
an aristocrat, 223 ; nonpareil type, 250. 

Morley, Henry, on John Shakspere's application for coat- 
armor, 272. 

Music, art of, 247-249. 

Nail illustration, common to Bacon and Shake-speare, 129, 130. 
Nash, Thomas, his allusion to the early ' Hamlet,' 20 n.; denounces 

Shakspere as an idiot, 37-40; ' Isle of Dogs,' 82. 
Natural history, treatment of, by Bacon and Shake-speare, 237-244. 
Navigation, art of, 251, 252. 

Newman, Francis W., on the authorship of the Tragedies, 36, 122, 123. 
Nichol, John, on a remarkable parallelism, 61 ; Bacon's inaccuracies, 

137; Bacon's private character, 181. 
Nicholson, Brinsley, on Ben Jonson's relations to Shakspere, 100. 
NoRRis, J. P., his opinion of the Shakspere Bust at Stratford, 32 ; 

of the Droeshout engraving, 35. 
Northumberland MSS., 82-84. 
Novum Organum, frontispiece of, 252. 

O'Connor, William, on Shake-speare's knowledge of classics, 6; 
Shakspere's will, 31 ; Shakspere's character, 278. 

Oldcastle, Sir John, caricatured as Falstaff, 205. 

Oldys, William, on alleged letter of King James to Shakspere, 273. 

Oratory, 249, 250. 

Osborne, Francis, on Bacon's familiarity with hunting and hawk- 
ing, 203. 

Otway, Thomas, purloins from ' Romeo and Juliet,' 120. 

'Our English Homer,' 2. 

' Othello,' source of, 4; Macaulay's opinion of it, 20 ; emendations 
for the folio, 113. 

Ovid, source of ' Venus and Adonis,' 2; Amoves, 15. 



292 Index. 



Pagination of first folio, 115. 

Parallelisms between Bacon and Shakespeare, 57-80; between 

Shake-speare and Montaigne, 86. 
Parkman, Francis, offers an objection to the Baconian theory, 

137- 

Parmenides, author of the phrase " to be or not to be," 69. 

Pearson, Charles H., on philosophy of war, 68; Dryden's esti- 
mate of Shake-speare, 121, 122. 

' Pericles,' play of, shows knowledge of heraldry, 252-261. 

Pepys, Samuel, his opinion of the Shake-speare plays, 119. 

Philosophy, Shake-speare's knowledge of, 8, 228. 

Pitt, William, uncontrolled extravagance of his servants, 175. 

Plagiarisms of Bacon and Shake-speare, 212. 

Plautus, his Menaechmi the source of ' Comedy of Errors,' 2. 

Play-actors, social position of, in time of Shake-speare, 49-51. 

Playwrights, social position of, in time of Shake-speare, 49-51' 

Pliny's Epistle to Vespasian, 113. 

Plowden's French Commentaries, when translated, 4. 

Plutarch, source of ' Timon of Athens,' 2. 

Poet-ape, Ben Jonson's epigram to, 41, 42. 

Poetaster, the, Ben Jonson's, 94-100. 

Poetry, Bacon's acknowledged, 159-167. 

Polonius, a caricature of Lord Burleigh, 205-211. 

Pope, Alexander, finds traces of Shake-speare in Dares Phrygius, 5; 
illiteracy of Shakspere, 12; Bacon's genius, 44 ; Shake-speare's 
object in life, 144. 

Portraits of Shakspere, 31-35; number of, 35, 36. 

Postscript, Sir Toby Matthew's, 51, 52. 

Pott, Mrs. Constance M., on Shake-speare's " works of the alpha- 
bet," 51 ; Promus, 53, 57 ; ' Misfortunes of Arthur,' 142 ; War- 
wickshire provincialisms in Shake-speare, 147, 148. 

Printing, art of, 250, 251. 

Promus, Bacon's, 53-57 ; salutatory phrases, 54; colloquialisms, 55, 
56; proverbs, 56; parallelisms, 70-76. 

Proverbs, in Bacon's Promus, 56; in Bacon and Shake-speare, 219, 
220. 

Provincialisms, 16, 145. 

Psalms, Bacon's translations of, 160-162; Milton's, 162, 163. 

Puns, in writings of Bacon and Shake-speare, 213. 

Quarterly Review, on Shake-speare's fine contempt for details, 
137 ; natural history, 239-244. 

Quevedo, Francisco de, supposed allusion to, in Matthew's post- 
script, 52. 

Quiney, Thomas, liquor-dealer, fined by town of Stratford, 275. 



• Index. 293 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, our knowledge of his powers of repartee, 

213, 214; founder of the Mermaid Club, 273. 
Ratsie's Ghost, personal allusion in, to Shakspere, 41. 
Rawley, William, his testimony to Bacon's versatility, 169; Bacon's 

private character, 178. 
Reade, Charles, on the Ireland forgeries, 124. 
Religion of Bacon and Shake-speare, 244-246. 
Remusat, M. de, on Bacon's intuitions, 229 ; refusal of Academy of 

Florence to admit Bacon to membership, 244, 245. 
'Return from Parnassus,' personal allusion in, to Shakspere, 41. 
' Richard II.,' treasonable use of play of, by Earl of Essex, xi8. 
Romano, Giulio, a sculptor, 218, 219. 
' Romeo and Juliet,' Italian character of, 4; Promus entries in, 53, 

54, 76. 
Rowe, Nicholas, his biography of Shakspere, 267. 
Royal Society, founded by Bacon, 244. 
Rymer, Thomas, his opinion of 'Othello,' 122-124. 



Salutations in the Promus, 54. 

Saturday Review, on Shake-speare's commendations of Giulio 
Romano as a sculptor, 219. 

ScHLEGEL, A. W. VON, On incongruity between Shakspere's life 
and the writings ascribed to him, 43 ; unique character of Shake- 
speare's works, 154. 

ScoTT, Sir Walter, concealment of his authorship of the Waverley 
novels, 88, 127; anachronisms, 134. 

Sea of troubles, meaning of, 65. 

Sense without motion, meaning of, 66. 

Shake-speare, William, the dramatist, attainments of, i-io ; 
knowledge of Latin, 2 ; of Greek, 3, 4 ; of Italian, 3, 4 ; of French, 4 ; 
of Spanish, 5 ; of ancient and modern literature, 5, 6, 230 ; of law, 
7, 8, 56, 230-235 ; of philosophy, 8, 228 ; extent of knowledge, 9, 10 ; 
origin of pseudonym, 13, 14; greatness unrecognized by contempo- 
raries, 23, 24; by critics of succeeding generations, 1 19-124; first 
appreciated by Lessing, 134; sentiments on love, 13S-141 ; doggerel 
in, 164; invention of words, 184; extent of vocabulary, 185 ; words 
of Latin origin, 185-187; literary style compared with Bacon's, 188, 
189; impetuosity of style, 191 ; triple forms of expression, 193, 194; 
use of phrase, " I cannot tell," 196-198 ; promiscuous examples of 
style, prose and verse, 198-201 ; remote analogies, 203 ; frequent 
alterations in the plays, 204; educated at Cambridge, 204, 205; 
plagiarisms, 212 ; punning on Bacon's name in the ' Merry Wives of 
Windsor,' 213; classical lore, 214; foreign travel, 215 ; proverbs, 
220, 221; knowledge of court etiquette, 223; an aristocrat, 223; 
singular use of word zveed, 224; knowledge of history, 229, 230; of 



294 Index. 

medicine, 235, 236; of natural history, 237-244; his religion, 245, 
246; knowledge of musical science, 247-249; an orator, 249; 
printing, 250; astrology, 251; familiar with the writings of the 
emblematists, 255-261 ; witchcraft, 261 ; freemasonry, 263. 

Shakspere, Hamnet, birth of, 268; death, 271. 

Shakspere, John, fined by town of Stratford for filthy habits, 15, 16; 
reputed an esquire, 41 ; coat-armor, 27, 28, 98, 272; death, 100 ;/. 

Shakspere, Judith, illiteracy of, 11 ; arraigned before court at 
Worcester, 275. 

Shakspere, Susanna, illiteracy of, 11 ; brings suit against John 
Lane for slander, 274; could not recognize her husband's MSS., 
276. 

Shakspere, William, his surname, i, 12-14; illiteracy of, 11, 12; 
chirography, 14, 15; epistolary correspondence, 14; departure from 
Stratford, 19, 20 ; unknown in literary and social circles in London, 
23 ; income, 23 ; retirement to Stratford, 24 ; indifference to liter- 
ary fame, 24, 27 ; occupation as a brewer, 24, 272 ; litigious, 27 ; 
applies for coat-armor for his father, 27 ; favors enclosures of 
common lands at Stratford, 28 ; inscription on his gravestone, 28 ; 
buried in the chancel of the church, 28; his will, 31; his bust, 31 ; 
Droeshout engraving, 35, 91 ; new Stratford portrait, 35 ; no claim 
made by him or for him to the plays, 36 ; personal references to 
him by contemporaries, 37-43; by Thomas Nash, 37-40; by Rob- 
ert Greene, 41 ; by Ben Jonson, 41, 42 ; no dark period in his life, 
155-157 ; incongruity between his life and his writings, 43, 158, 159; 
no evidence that he ever visited the Continent, 219; his parentage, 
266, 267 ; deer-stealing tradition, 269 ; lameness, 270 ; summary of 
the facts of his life, 277. 

Shaw, Thomas B., on Shakspere's illiteracy, 12. 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, on Bacon as a poet, 170. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, on the state of the theatre in the time of Shake- 
speare, 133. 

Simpson, Richard, on contemporary allusions to Shakspere, 39,41. 

Smith, Goldwin, concerning Bacon's Essay on Love, and ' Romeo 
and Juliet,' 138. 

Smith, William H., an early Baconian, 108, 109. 

Sonnet XLVL, 7. 

Spanish Language, Shake-speare's knowledge of, 5. 

Spedding, James, on Bacon's capabilities as a poet, 167, 171, 172; 
on Bacon's private character, 181 ; on a mental defect in Bacon, 
227, 228. 

Standard, the (London), on parallelisms between Bacon and Shake- 
speare, 79, 80. 

Stapfer, Paul, on Shake-speare's knowledge of Latin, 2 ; com- 
mendation of Gervinus, 2 ; his opinion of Shake-speare's learn- 
ing, 6, 9. 



• Index. 295 

Staunton, Howard, on Chettle's apology, 153. 

Steevens, George, his opinion of the Shakespeare sonnets, 122. 

Stratford-upon-Avon, illiteracy of the people of, 15; condition of 

its streets, 15, 16; social character, 19; dramatic performances 

prohibited, 37. 
Swinburne, Algernon C, on soliloquies in ' Hamlet,' 113; succes- 
sive changes in the text of ' Hamlet,' 204. 
Swing, David, on the Baconian theory, 155. 



Taine, H^ a., genius of Francis Bacon, 48 ; description of the 
theatre in Bacon's time, 50; poetic character of Bacon's prose, 
169; Bacon's mind intuitional, 229. 

Tate, Nahum, his opinion of ' King Lear,' 119. 

Tavener, J. W., minor points of resemblance in the writings of Bacon 
and Shake-speare, 169. 

Tennyson, Alfred, criticised by 'Christopher North,' 119. 

Theatre, the, character of, in Shake-speare's time, 49-51. 

Theobald, Robert M.,on colloquialisms in the Promus, 57; North- 
umberland MSS., 83 ; identical sentiments on the passion of 
love in Bacon and Shake-speare, 139; the alleged dark period in 
Shakspere's life, 157, 158; character of Bacon's prose, 170. 

'Timon of Athens,' autobiographical character of, 116. 

Troilus and Cressida,' preface to, 109, no; prologue, 112. 

Twickenham, Bacon's residence at, 168. 



Ulrici, Hermann, on the play of 'Timon of Athens,' 117 ; on Shak- 
spere's dark period, 156, 157; on Shake-speare's knowledge of 
musical science, 248. 



Vasari refers to Giulio Romano as a sculptor, 218, 219. 
Venice, local knowledge of, in the plays, 215-218. 
'Venus and Adonis,' source of, 2; date, 15, 269; scholarly nature, 
15, 16; where written, 16; dedication to Earl of Southampton, 271. 
Verplanck, G. C., on source of ' Comedy of Errors,' 2. 
Vocabulary, extent of Bacon's, 184 ; of Shake-speare's, 185, 280,281. 

Walter, James, his True Life of Shakspere, 201. 

War, Shake-speare's philosophy of, 68. 

Warwickshire, dialect of, 145-148. 

Watts, T., on the metre of the Sonnets, 201. 

Waverley novels, the, concealed authorship of, 88, 89, 127. 

Weed, singular use of the word by Bacon and Shake-speare, 224. 



296 



Index. 



Welsh, Alfred H., on Bacon's literary style, 47. 

Weis, John, on parallelisms in Bacon and Shake-speare, 79. 

Whipple, Edwin P., on incongruity between Shakspere's life and 
his writings, 43; poetic character of Bacon's prose, 171 ; Bacon's 
philanthropy, 182. 

White, Richard Grant, on Shake-speare's knowledge of Latin, 2 ; 
of Greek, 3 ; of Italian, 4 ; of French, 5 ; finds traces of Shake- 
speare in Alcestis of Euripides, 5 ; Shake-speare's academic 
studies, 6; wisdom in ' Troilus and Cressida,' 6; Shake-speare's 
knowledge of law, 7, 231 ; illiteracy, 12; condition of Stratford 
streets, 19 ; tragedy of ' King Lear,' 20 ; Shakspere's ^cial posi- 
tion in London, 23; pitiless biographers of Shakspere, 27; bust, 
32; Droeshout engraving, 35; a "miraculous miracle," 43 ; Pro- 
mus, 57 ; plagiarism from Montaigne in ' Tempest,' 86 ; Shake- 
speare's motives as a writer, 144, 145 ; doggerel in Shake-speare, 
164. 

White, Thomas W., on false Latin in ' Love's Labor's Lost,' 2 ; on 
Shake-speare's insensibility to the gross passion of love, 140, 141. 

Whittier, John G., on the authorship of Shake-speare, 278. 

WiGSTON, W. F. C, on Freemasonry in Shake-speare, 263. 

Winstanley, William, on illiteracy of Shakspere, 11. 

' Winter's Tale,' the, criticised by Ben Jonson, 94 ; statue of Her- 
mione, 218, 219. 

Wise, John R., on Warwickshire provincialisms, 147 ; ideal Shake- 
speare, 266. 

Wit, Bacon's, 137. 

Witchcraft, in Bacon and Shake-speare, 261-263= 

Withers, George, on Bacon as a poet, 167. 

Wordsworth, William, rank of, 119; on pathetic character of 
'Othello,' 156; Ode to Immortality, 165; Peter Bell, 165. 

Wyman, W. H., concerning the earliest doubts on authorship of 
Shake-speare, 118. 



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